Second Nature

Winner of the 23rd annual A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize Chaun Ballards 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 Americas 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 Taylors 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 togetherform 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 himincluding poet Matthew Shenoda who provides an insightful Foreword to the collectionSecond 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 ones identity is shaped by community and country.