Winner of the 23rd annual
A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize
Chaun Ballard’s gripping debut collection weaves childhood experiences,
historical events, and family stories into a living tapestry of memory that
celebrates the landscape of Black America, both rural and urban.
Riddled with the ghostly voices of family and
friends, Second Nature is fearless in
its wrestling with America’s fractured past and troubled present. In these
poems, W.E.B. DuBois and Fredrick Douglas have a conversation, Michael Brown
meditates on the nature of the cosmos, Johnnie Taylor’s guitar sings in
sonnets, and the road Walt Whitman set out upon comes alive for a new
generation.
Through innovative re-imaginings of the
sonnet, the pastoral, and the contrapuntal, Ballard engages with popular
culture while examining the intricacies of all that is wedded together—form and
content, mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, husband and wife,
and a nation long dependent on created binaries that serve to maintain
structures of oppression.
Interspersed with quotations and inspired by
the rich legacy of poets who came before him—including poet Matthew Shenoda
who provides an insightful Foreword to the collection—Second Nature is
a testament to interconnectedness, a love letter to the deep roots that we come
from, and a reminder of the myriad ways in which one’s identity is shaped by
community and country.
