U-M Creative Currents

LSA’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program: Aaron Coleman

• Arts Initiative • Season 4 • Episode 6

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In this episode of U-M Creative Currents, host Mark Clague talks with Aaron Coleman, poet, translator, and professor of English and Comparative Literature in U-M’s College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. He also serves on the faculty of the U-M Helen Zell Writers’ Program. Coleman shares how poetry and translation shape his creative practice and how the Michigan literary community fosters dialogue across cultures and identities.

As part of the Michigan Arts Festival series, Aaron previews the Zell Visiting Writers Series, which welcomes acclaimed poet and essayist Roger Reeves to campus for readings and craft talks on October 16–17, 2025.

Listeners will hear excerpts from Coleman’s award-winning collection Red Wilderness (Winner of the 2020 GLCA New Writers Award) as he explores how translation breathes new life into poetry—bridging languages, cultures, and time.

*Production Note: This episode is part of U-M Creative Currents' special Michigan Arts Festival podcast series and is edited by Sly Pup Productions.



Mark Clague:

Welcome to Creative Currents, the Michigan Arts podcast, where we explore the power of collaborative creativity and the ways that the arts inspire dialogue and community connection. I'm your host, Mark Klegg. Today we're continuing our Michigan Arts Festival series, showcasing the people and happenings of the 2025 Michigan Arts Festival, which runs from September 25th through October 26th. In our Arts Initiative studio today, we have poet and professor Aaron Coleman, who serves on the faculty of the Helen Zell Writers Program in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, and I just heard also in the Comparative Literature Department. Aaron is a poet, a translator, a professor of English at U of M, and his work explores Afro-diasporic literature, translation, and the poetics of blackness across the Americas and the Caribbean. A Fulbright scholar and National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, Coleman is the author of poetry collections, including Threat to Come Close from 2018, and the just published Red Wilderness, both published by Four Way Books. His translations include The Great Zoo by Afro-Cuban poet Nicholas Guillon. In his writing, both creative and scholarly, Coleman investigates race, migration, masculinity, and memory across the global south and diasporic context. Aaron, it's great to have you as a guest on Creative Currents.

Aaron Coleman:

I need to flag that summary of my work.

Mark Clague:

Yeah, you can totally use that in the future, no problem.

Aaron Coleman:

Thanks.

Mark Clague:

So um Helen Zell Writers Program, I imagine there's a few people on campus who don't know about this program, although it's actually really one of our best funded, sort of most sort of prestigious programs.

Aaron Coleman:

Yeah, it's an incredible program. Um for those that are in the world of creative writing, whether it's poetry or fiction or nonfiction, I do think it's uh not a over, it's not I'm not overstating the case to say that it's one of the best programs in the country. Um and Helen Zell is an uh incredible um sponsor, funder uh that has just done so much to help us take this program to the next level, I think in the past 15 or so years. Um and yeah, the program is, I think, hopefully uh a community watering hole for anyone that's interested in creative writing. Um and that trickles down not just from the MFA program, but into the broader creative writing community here in Ann Arbor, and I think even really Southeast Michigan.

Mark Clague:

So MFA stands for Masters of Fine Arts. That's right. How long does it take to get an MFA?

Aaron Coleman:

Two years usually. Some you'll find three. Um, but ours is two years, and then there's also an opportunity to have a Zell Fellowship, which we affectionately call the Zellos, which is kind of a third-year fellowship as well, too, which gives them time to finish their creative theses and turn them into publishable works.

Mark Clague:

And how many students are in the fellows program?

Aaron Coleman:

So there are nine in each cohort. So for each genre, we have 18 students as genres.

Mark Clague:

Poetry, creative writing, and creative nonfiction?

Aaron Coleman:

Uh two genres. But there's also the incredible Isha Sabatini-Sloan who holds down our nonfiction program. She's a part of it here as well, too. And I think both the poets and the fiction writers uh enjoy working with her in nonfiction too. I think she's kind of it's almost like a Venn diagram. She unites us in a great way.

Mark Clague:

Oh, interesting. So what is creative nonfiction?

Aaron Coleman:

Essays, memoir, all kinds of writing that blurs the genres between um fiction, poetry, and and any other kind of essayistic writing.

Mark Clague:

Aaron Powell Although this is the first time we've had you in the studio, the first time we've talked about the Helen Zell Writers Program, we've had a long association at the Arts Initiative with the program because we have a program called the Creative Careers Fellowship. And we have three former students, they're always alumni, who've graduated from MFA programs, who then come back and do a year with us or nine months, and that's the same kind of thing. It's sort of an opportunity for artists to make art and launch their careers. And Zahar Sidi and Caroline New have both been uh graduates of the MFA program who've been residents with us too, and they've done really great work. So it's just nice to make the connection finally.

Aaron Coleman:

Absolutely. And you know, I just love to hear about that kind of overlap. I know that there's never just one source for creative writers and artists more broadly. And any time that we can create that kind of uh cross-pollination uh between students, I'd I'd I just I'm all for it.

Mark Clague:

So this is probably a dangerous question on one hand, because you know, pursuing an arts life is about how we grow as individuals and pursuing that light, the experience of it. But you know, we're also trying to continue that practice with our graduates after they they leave the University of Michigan. So what do what do MFA graduates do career-wise? There must be a whole range of stuff they do to earn a living.

Aaron Coleman:

Oh my goodness. Yeah, there's a there's a wide range. I mean, I also I I myself have my MFA PhD. Um, so I it it ranges the full gamut.

Mark Clague:

So you can teach, you can become a professor.

Aaron Coleman:

You can you can teach, you can be a professor. There's folks that work in publishing, there's folks that work um in admitted arts administration, um, galleries, museums. There's folks that work um for publications like uh magazines and things like that as well, too. So there I think there's a lot of different avenues. Um and really what we're trying to prepare the students to do uh going forward from the program is to really just think broadly about the possibilities of what fits their own particular journey and what they want to do after with their with their degree and what they're writing. And some of that is teaching, some of that is community building and arts and activist spaces. There's just all kinds of different paths that they choose. And we're supportive of all those, all those different uh trajectories.

Mark Clague:

So tell me a little bit about your story. Like how did you enter an MFA program yourself and become, I mean, did you have an inspiration? You thought, I gotta be a poet? What what what was the moment of realization?

Aaron Coleman:

Probably, yeah, probably a little bit of that. But no, I have to, you know, I have to say, uh, you know, I have to express my gratitude to some of my favorite um professors and teachers along the way. Um, because it was really um during my undergraduate years where I worked with Diane Seuss, who's a Michigan poet as well, who's based in the Kalamazoo area, um, who really just kind of helped me recognize that, you know, poetry didn't necessarily have to be this thing that I just did as a hobby on the side, but I might as well go ahead and try to bet on myself and see if I can, you know, put this at the center of my life. And so, you know, I taught actually abroad for a while via the Fulbright that you mentioned in Madrid and Spain. And that was absolutely life-changing. Um, I spent some time in South Africa as well, teaching, and that got me really interested in translation and thinking about the African diaspora. And I moved back to the United States and uh became a teacher in Chicago, on Chicago public schools, through uh a nonprofit that unfortunately didn't make it through the pandemic, but did over 25 years of incredible work called Literature for All of Us. And all those experiences of teaching let me know that I wanted to be an educator of some kind. But at the same time, I think I realized that I didn't necessarily um I wasn't putting my art first. And so that's what made me go ahead and finally decide to go back and do an MFA. Because I just realized that um I wanted to see uh if I could have poetry at the center of my life. And I'm so grateful that I did. Um I did it in St. Louis with a poet Carl Phillips, who's actually here this week in the the Zell Visiting Writers series as well. Um and yeah, the the the MFA led me to thinking about not just poetry, but the translation of poetry. And I just kind of fell head over heels for Nicolas Guillen, this Afro-Cuban poet who was a contemporary of Langston Hughes, and that led me to translation. And there's a saying amongst translators that um that in the process of translating, you also kind of become a biographer. And so you end up having to learn so much about their life. And so it's really for me about a kind of intergenerational multilingual community of of poets and writers around the world, and what can we do to um to continue to be aware of the magnitude of that, the breadth of that, and then how can we continue to cultivate and grow it?

Mark Clague:

Well, there's so many things that come to mind to talk about, but maybe it's exciting for us to have an artist in the studio. Um, do you have some poetry of yours you could share with us?

Aaron Coleman:

Sure. Yeah, absolutely. Um, let's see. I've yeah, I'll read something, uh, maybe a shorter poem. This is from your new book? This is from the new book, Red Wilderness. And, you know, I'm I'm from Michigan originally. This poem is uh is dedicated to Detroit. And it's titled In the City of Tenderness and Desperate Promises. Punctured in the soft hour, we tried a new way home. Past the pawn shop neon green with memory, she became away with me from broken roads. The birdbone litters tall forgotten weeds. We pause to try to see inside each fractured hollow. But hard rain hurried us. A slanted ground that was a risk became a gulch. Silent tilted heads appeared to prey on a passing city bus, but eyes lie. Who am I to say that I have seen too much, to trust another stranger, to learn to start over? The end got here before us. Each footprint deep and flooded with chemical runoff, technicolor surfaces, but no real border. The bones don't float. The birds were our own. The root turned blue and bottomless, but it wasn't waves and isn't water, just the consequence. We wander in what endless sound and learn to call it falling, until she says, This love is a decision not to forget, but to keep going. Nothing else. I wonder if we are bound to drown in chance in mangled maps, slick with rain, rock moss riots, money green until tornado green, churning like our city's restless silence.

Mark Clague:

Wow, that's beautiful. Thanks a lot. So vivid too. I mean, like I can l literally like see the the technicolor sort of oil slick on top of like when it rains on onto a paved road and you get all of the the the cars, you know, they're the evidence of them passing washes into the into the stream in a sense. But so where did that poem come from? So do you is there a particular moment of inspiration or is is that something you you struggle over over time? Or does it change, or does it come all in one thing?

Aaron Coleman:

You know, I I I think that they're I love that they're more mysterious than I can say. It's never really just one thing, but I do think that, and this is actually speaking of that mentor I mentioned here that's visiting us on campus this week, Carl Phillips. One thing that he always says is that that poems don't record experience, they transform experience. And so I feel like the poem is kind of a distillation of all these different moments of paying attention and just being, you know, enamored by uncanny images that are very real in the world. And yet if we take a moment to really pay attention to them, um, they can kind of show us a little bit more of our world and maybe a little bit more of ourselves. And so, you know, um my students are probably tired of hearing me say this, but I think poems are ultimately really about changing our relationship to attention and helping us to see things with a different pace, with a different clarity, with a different openness and curiosity. And I think that poem came from just trying a new way home.

Mark Clague:

When you talk to people about like how to engage with poetry, what advice do you give them? And and I ask in some ways because like when I was in high school and we did poetry, like it was always sort of intimidating to me. Because like I could assume I could read history, I could read the story, I knew what was happening, I could understand the characters, and then get into poetry. And I basically I know that this is like way deeper than just the words on the page, and like it's supposed to be referential. And and I think even when you were just reading, on one hand I get sucked into these beautiful images, and then I realize, oh, there's a story going on. And then you say something, you know, about like love and forgiveness, and it it I pop into some of what my memories about, you know, of course love and forgiveness played a role in my life. And then I'm like, oh wait, the poem's going on and now I'm lost. Well, that's uh what do you you know, there's so many ways to enter poetry and so many ways to connect with it. I don't know. It's it's it's sort of it's it's almost intimidating because of the possibilities.

Aaron Coleman:

Well, you know, firstly, I just appreciate Mark, just even the attention that you've given to the poem already. And yeah, and I I I have to say that for me too, um, poetry was something that was kind of intimidating in high school for sure. I mean, in a former life, uh, you know, I was I was a I people I think saw me as a jock. You know, I played football my first two years of college before Diane Seuss helped, you know, helped me find my way to where I think I needed to be going with poetry anyways. But I think that there's this kind of misconception that poetry is um locked away in a library somewhere and from a century many, you know, many centuries ago. And yes, there's poetry from that time, but poetry is ultimately a living thing that we breathe and and and speak to each other. I think there are little bits of poetry, you know, in in the song lyrics you love or in a phrase that you remember from other, you know, from the from from a mentor or just a friend or overhearing something that sticks with you. Um and so you know, I think um ultimately for me um I I hope that I can help make and and the MFA program can help make in the Michigan Arts Festival and help make poetry more accessible and um help us kind of all to see that it's not so far away. It really is something that's fundamental to human experience. And, you know, um I should say too, it's really awesome to hear the way you you you uh held on to the images. Cause I think for me, the images of a poem are kind of its backbone. You know, it's some it's in many ways, it's the doorway into the poem. Um and then from there, we have our own associations, you know, and so we start with what's there in the poem, but we always bring ourselves to it too. So I'm I'm grateful to hear that um whatever was there resonated in a particular way, that it led you on your own path. And, you know, that I think is what um we're always thinking about in the MFA program. And I teach the undergraduates as well, too. I've got an intermediate uh undergraduate uh poetry workshop right now, and it's just my favorite thing. It gets back to the high school teacher and me to just be constantly in a situation where folks are kind of in a uh, you know, they're they're saying, Oh, you can do that in a poem. Um, and that kind of exploration um and inspiration, even thinking about the root of you know, breath. I mean, poetry is it's embodied. Um, it's not just what's on the page, but it it's it's how we express it too.

Mark Clague:

Yeah. One of our principles at the Arts Initiative is Arts for All, of really trying to like have everybody give the arts a try. And one of the interesting things is when we ask our students today, um, are you an artist? Actually, 75% of them say yes.

Aaron Coleman:

I love that.

Mark Clague:

And, you know, we define that as like musician and actor and filmmaker, but also poet and writer, as well as dancer. And and um, you know, so I think of, you know, I'm a writer, I'm a historian, so I tend to write narrative and I'm writing fact, but it's really hard to write well. And I think, you know, for me, writing is a process of discovery, like trying to figure out this all these neurons fighting firing in my brain, like what is the actual essence of the idea I'm trying to get at? And it's writing the revision process. And I can think when I've done creative writing at times, it's it's a lot about self-discovery.

Aaron Coleman:

Absolutely.

Mark Clague:

So here's the question. So, you know, we're reading so much about AI these days, and how like nobody's gonna need to write anymore because you're just gonna have AI do all the writing. And and I'm like, well, first of all, you have to interact with the AI by writing because they're language models, so we still gotta know how to write. But I I think the value of writing is not just like getting the product at the end. It's the journey to get there and what you discover and learn. So I guess I'm looking for reassurance here, Aaron. Um in your from your classes and how you teach your students, like um what is the what's the real value of learning how to write?

Aaron Coleman:

Yeah, it's it's all process. It's all process. I mean, the process of discovery um in in going through revisions and thinking about, well, what do I really want to say? And and and letting the poems surprise us and the ways that they might take us into thinking about, you know, connecting two different images that we might not have otherwise done. You know, there's poems are that's that piece about um not just recording experience, but transforming it.

Mark Clague:

Um transforms your experience as a writer as well as the reader.

Aaron Coleman:

Absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, I I you know I I won't digress too much down this road, but I do think that, you know, AI as a metaphor is such a misnomer. I, you know, large language models are using language that you know humans have created. And those large language models, without the process, you know, I don't know where that leaves us. And I don't, I don't know where it takes us, and I don't know where it leaves us either.

Mark Clague:

Well, you know, the the few times I've used AI and I don't actually use it that much, but it is it's part of the process. Like I use it sort of as a brainstorming thing. Absolutely. To me, that's not something to get a final product yet. And I'm I worry I'm falling behind here, but but I like my way of doing it. Um so one of the things with the Michigan Arts Festival, we're hoping, is that folks try out new things or things they might not know about. And I think probably people know, you know, might know about our art museum, they might know about the big concerts at Hill Auditorium. Probably a lot fewer of them know that they can come to these writing club events that you got going on and that they can actually learn and follow their craft of writing. So tell us about the Visiting Writers series that you have going and what what do we have to look forward to during the the month of the festival?

Aaron Coleman:

Oh, yeah. I mean, it's such a incredible program. I really do think that the series is the flagship public component of the Zell Visiting Writers series. And we actually partner with UMA and uh, you know, the University of Michigan uh Art Museum. Yep. And we we have the readings uh in Stern Auditorium inside of of UMA most Thursday nights. And so even just fundamentally, it's already an interdisciplinary endeavor. We've already got you know visual art and and writers in the same space, just by nature of partnering with with UMA in that way. Um Roger Reeves is coming during the the Michigan Arts Festival, October 16th and 17th, I believe he'll be here. Um, and it's just you know, I can't say enough about how he is such an incredible, he's both a poet and an essayist, a public intellectual and scholar. Um the ways that he's thinking about American-ness, the the complexity and the possibilities of masculinity and fatherhood. Um he's just a really, really amazing writer that um for me, I think, has opened up new ways to consider what it means to be compassionate, um, what it means to engage with history, um, how we think about memory and inheritance. Um that's probably where our our work overlaps. Um and I'm just really excited for him to be here. Um and like I said, the the public component is that Thursday night reading. He also will be giving a craft talk Friday morning in the Michigan Union um at 10 a.m.

Mark Clague:

Um So it's Thursday night, 5 30, I think, at Stern Auditorium at a Remo. And that's the that's the auditorium is downstairs, right? You go in the front door and you head down the stairs. So yeah, that holds a few people. I can get a couple hundred people there, I would think.

Aaron Coleman:

Oh, yeah, yeah. And you know, I'm always surprised that uh the the intersection of folks that show up. I mean, folks show up from the public, uh, folks show up uh from the broader Southeast Michigan writer community, writing community, um, in in um from you know, some of my friends and colleagues that uh live and work in Detroit will make the trip out occasionally. Um and yeah, I it's really great. And there's there's definitely been a handful. I mean, uh just in recent memory, I think uh, you know, when Ross Gay was here, standing room only, you know.

Mark Clague:

So And it's completely free, right?

Aaron Coleman:

It's completely free. Yeah.

Mark Clague:

Just come in. Absolutely. And is that true? Is it the 10 a.m. on Friday? Is that open to the public too? That's right. That's and that's at the Michigan Union and the Anderson like rooms there.

Aaron Coleman:

Right. Yeah. That sort of that big space in the Michigan Union. Yeah. So and the and the goal is that those that these need to be free and they need to be public because these writers come and they give so much to our students. But um, what's really cool is that in these public events, our graduate students actually, you know, they they introduce the writer before they do a live QA interview after the reading with them on Thursday night. So it's just really this kind of cool, you know, situation where there's different generations of writers thinking together. And I love to kind of see that happening in real time. Um, there's other folks that I can, you know, I can mention some dates of things that are happening throughout the year.

Mark Clague:

We are hoping that folks will get just infected with the bug of the of the arts and they'll get to know about the Zell Writer series and uh that they'll not only come during the festival, but they'll become make it a habit to come all year. So what other highlights do you have uh this year, maybe to wrap us up?

Aaron Coleman:

Yeah, I'm I'm really excited about Lori Moore, um, who is a writer and novelist coming October 30th and 31st. Uh the poet Lina Tufaja is coming over uh around Valentine's Day, February 13th and 14th. Craig Santos Perez is coming uh March 12th and 13th. I mean, I think the total series each year is roughly 10 writers across all genres. Um, I could say more, but those are just some of the ones that I'm I'm really looking forward to.

Mark Clague:

And so I assume people can find info on the web.

Aaron Coleman:

That's right. Yeah, you can find that on the English department website, on the Helen Zell Writers Program website. Um there's probably I know I know that there's I've I've even seen it, I think, even like a crazy wisdom downtown post. You know, so it's it's all over the place. Yeah.

Mark Clague:

Well, we will definitely link all that, those sites into our show notes and uh also uh link to your books and and your bio. But thank you so much, Aaron, for joining us on Creative Currents. I could talk to you for another another two hours, it's too.

Aaron Coleman:

But no, I'm so I'm so grateful to be here and thanks so much for the work that you're doing. I'm so excited about the Michigan Arts Festival. And yeah, let's just kick take all this creative energy and continue to build momentum together. Sounds great. Thanks.

Mark Clague:

Creative Currents is a project of the University of Michigan's Arts Initiative. Please subscribe to hear more great conversations with artists, scholars, and arts leaders from across the campus and across the globe. Send your comments and suggestions via email to creativecurrents at umish.edu. This episode of Creative Currents was produced by Jessica Dinks and edited by Slypup Productions. Our original theme music is composed and performed by Ansel Nealy, an alumnus of the University of Michigan School of Music, Theater and Dance. To learn more about the University of Michigan's Arts Initiative, please visit our website at arts.umish.edu. Thanks for listening and for being part of the Michigan Arts community that makes our campus so fabulous. So until next time, stay curious, stay inspired, and keep your creative currents flowing.