Red Wilderness

In defiance of life’s intractable march forward, Red Wilderness by Aaron Coleman (Winner of the 2020 GLCA New Writers Award) sounds the strange fathoms of the past, weaving a living song beyond what haunts our country and ourselves. Coleman’s second collection interpolates American history with his own family’s legacy, reflecting on national identity, Blackness, taboo, faith, and remembrance while enacting a multigenerational chorus of poems that stretches back to the Civil War. In present day, Coleman ＂[tries] a new way home / past the pawn shop neon-green with memory＂ and inspects bird bones in ＂tall, forgotten weeds＂ while ＂hard rain＂ turns his ground into ＂a gulch＂--another place where ＂the end got here before us.＂ In the next poem, transported between storms, Coleman channels his ancestor, a soldier of the Pennsylvania 25th Colored Infantry at sea during a downpour in March 1864: ＂I say no to death now. I’m nobody’s slave / now. I’m alive and not alone.＂ In these restorative lyrics, an end is an entrypoint to memory and reimagination, to something unending--a spiritual freedom, collective strength, and boundless love threading separate years into one strand. Red Wilderness visualizes an intimate, living archive that maps myths and realities of blood, boundaries, geography, and genealogy, and Coleman brilliantly curates the sound of time’s river wending across ancient land. ＂Hold and let fall water,＂ he instructs us. ＂If I / listen for my body living I hear who I am.＂

Aaron Coleman is a poet, translator, educator, and scholar of the African Diaspora. He is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts, Cave Canem, the Fulbright Program, and the American Literary Translators Association. His debut poetry collection, Threat Come Close, was the winner of the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award, and his chapbook, St. Trigger, won the Button Poetry Prize. He is also the translator of Afro-Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén’s 1967 collection, The Great Zoo, selected for the Phoenix Poet Series by University of Chicago Press. His poems, essays, and translations have appeared in publications including The New York Times, Boston Review, Callaloo, and Poetry Magazine. From Metro-Detroit, Coleman has lived and worked with youth in locations including Spain, South Africa, Chicago, St. Louis, and Kalamazoo. He is an assistant professor of English and Comparative Literature in the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan.