The Necessity of Wildfire

Winner of the Wren Poetry Prize selected by final judge Ada Limâon, Caitlin Scarano's second full-length collection is The Necessity of Wildfire. It begins, To not harm / each other is not enough. I want to love you / so much that you have no before." These poems chase a singular, thorny question: how does where and who we came from shape who and how we love? Judge Ada Limâon says the resulting collection is "hungry, clear-eyed, tough, and generous." Though originally from the South, Scarano's imagination is galvanized by the Pacific Northwest-floods and wildfires, the Salish Sea and the North Cascades, and the humans and animals whose lives intersect and collide there. In this collection, Scarano reckons with a legacy of violence on both sides of her family, the death of her estranged father, the unraveling of two long-term relationships, the complexity of sexuality, and her decision not to have children. With fierce lyricality, these poems-"stories without monsters, / stories without morals"-resist both redemption and blame, yet call in mercy"--