Wherein I am: Highlights from the Aaron Coleman Papers
Item set
- Title
- English Wherein I am: Highlights from the Aaron Coleman Papers
Items
-
A large print of Coleman´s poem ¨The Viciousness Ends¨ from Parabola Collaborative Arts Exhibition by Washington University Graduate MFA programs. This poem was part of a collaboration with Addoley Dzegede, Dayna Kriz, and Kellie Spano in December 2014. -
In collaboration with Writing and Visual Arts MFA Graduates Maura Pellettieri and Laurencia Strauss, Impossible Wants was a social practice project that publicly investigated desire and loss in real time as an exchange among poets, visual artists, the City of St. Louis Street Department, and the public. -
These introductory notes are from WashU’s “Day of Dialogue and Action.” Coleman says Guillén created a conceptual structure, which Coleman terms an Afrodiasporic consciousness. -
This letter summarizes Coleman’s many achievements as he completed his third year in the PhD Program in Comparative Literature and looked ahead to the next. -
Coleman developed this course for African and African American Studies about Black poetics in the 20th Century. -
Coleman kept ephemera from the numerous conferences he attended and participated in during his years at Washington University. -
Coleman prepared presentation notes for a Lit in the Making Reading, which showcases writers in the International Writers Track, hosted by Professor Matthias Göritz. -
This manuscript page shows some of Coleman’s thoughts at the time, e.g. "Does the heart of Afro-Americans live in the Caribbean? Afro American is a diasporic concept, not a U.S. concept.” -
This framed photograph was gifted to Coleman from the Pulitzer Arts Foundation on his last day of work as Public Arts Project Assistant, where he explored the relationship between visual art, poetry, and community-centered art projects. This image was taken during poet Bhanu Kapil’s residency at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, where fellow Wash U MFA alum Philip Matthews and Coleman supported the development of a series of public events engaging local artists and cultural workers, titled, ¨How to Grieve and Dream at the Same Time.¨ -
As this heavily annotated document shows, Coleman was an active discussant on this roundtable about the many conceptions of belonging. “You cannot disassemble the master’s house with the master’s tools. But what if the tools no longer belong to the master?” writes Coleman. -
Coleman was a Chancellor’s graduate fellowship recipient and was featured on the cover of the WashU informational pamphlet about the program. -
Watercolor portrait of Coleman completed by Dandridge during his poetry reading at “Goodie House,” a poetry reading series at Soulard Arts Market/Human Spaces. Dandridge created these 10-minute portraits and gifted them to a number of St. Louis poets over the years. -
“How much is too much abstraction?” writes Coleman on his manuscript, among other notes from his thesis defense. -
Coleman kept his syllabi from the Poetry Writing 1 and Poetry Writing 2 classes he taught as an MFA candidate and Third-Year Fellow. -
Coleman attended this Washington University Libraries symposium celebrating James Merrill and took these notes on the poet whose papers his own would join six years later as part of the Modern Literature Collection. -
An earlier draft was titled, “(Remember) Iola...A Translation of Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted.” Professor Carl Phillips writes, “Does it feel like yours or like an exercise?...To me, it feels like yours, a piece.” -
This poster was carried by Coleman during the summer of 2014 protests after the killing of Michael Brown, which connects to a deeper legacy of the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers strike where the “I am a Man” signs became a national symbol. Martin Luther King, Jr. was in town supporting the strike when he was assassinated. -
Workshop notes from a MFA poetry classmate and Professor Mary Jo Bang on a poem. Coleman kept many such worksheets to help document the revision process.