Keith S. Wilson
Photo courtesy of Keith S. Wilson
Bio
Keith S. Wilson is an Affrilachian Poet, Cave Canem fellow, and graduate of the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop. He has received three scholarships from Bread Loaf as well as scholarships from MacDowell, Tin House, UCross, Millay Colony, and the Vermont Studio Center, among others. Keith serves as assistant poetry editor at Four Way Review and digital media editor at Obsidian Journal. Keith's first book, Fieldnotes on Ordinary Love, will be published by Copper Canyon in 2019.
His work has appeared or is appearing in the following journals: Poetry, Adroit Journal, Crab Orchard Review, Narrative, Indiana Review, and Arts & Letters. Additionally, he won a Best of the Net Award, has been anthologized in Best New Poets, and was appointed a Gregory Djanikian Scholar. His nonfiction won a Redivider Blurred Genre prize.
Keith currently lives in Gambier, Ohio, where he serves as the Kenyon Review Fellow in Poetry.
I'll put it plainly, because there is a lot of romance tied to the idea of the struggling artist: It was not many months ago that I was working at a grocery store for the expired food and charging dental bills on multiple credit cards. This money will allow me to continue the kinds of research and work that I'd given up. This kind of support—the incredible opportunities this National Endowment for the Arts grant will afford me—also ends up affecting the day to day lives of artists like and unlike myself throughout the country, since it is often the case that we will forgo one necessity for another. These are sacrifices artists make because of the ability of art to affect change and save lives (it has saved mine many times), but they are sacrifices that our families and loved ones also make. I am extraordinarily grateful to the NEA for lightening our burden.
"Aubade: Dark Matter"
Our body heat in space, the condensation
as the light makes heaven of it. We’re early,
curved and signatory, the sheets
paler than the sky and made
of immaterial. My hands confused
for want of your hands
or waist. Rolling, what claims
we make of earth, what is inferred and isn't
sure, what the undersides of the leaves
of the forest floor are called. Your breath.
My limbs and yours. All of space
cannot be space. Arousing
patches in the grass. A mouse
I never said to you. Invasion of clover, black
pollen of your hair. Only yesterday
I said I love. The opposite of stars.