Winner of the 23rd annualA. Poulin, Jr. Poetry PrizeChaun Ballard’s gripping debut collection weaves childhood experiences,historical events, and family stories into a living tapestry of memory thatcelebrates the landscape of Black America, both rural and urban. Riddled with the ghostly voices of family andfriends, Second Nature is fearless inits wrestling with America’s fractured past and troubled present. In thesepoems, W.E.B. DuBois and Fredrick Douglass have a conversation, Michael Brownmeditates on the nature of the cosmos, Johnnie Taylor’s guitar sings insonnets, and the road Walt Whitman set out upon comes alive for a newgeneration. Through innovative re-imaginings of thesonnet, the pastoral, and the contrapuntal, Ballard engages with popularculture while examining the intricacies of all that is wedded together—form andcontent, mothers and fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers, husband and wife,and a nation long dependent on created binaries that serve to maintainstructures of oppression. Interspersed with quotations and inspired bythe rich legacy of poets who came before him—including poet Matthew Shenodawho provides an insightful Foreword to the collection—Second Nature isa testament to interconnectedness, a love letter to the deep roots that we comefrom, and a reminder of the myriad ways in which one’s identity is shaped bycommunity and country.
