The Wizard’s Homecoming

Elwin Cotman draws from a rich vein — subversive, blistering, playful, and always surprising. The world feels a little more vivid, a lot more haunted, every time I pick up one of his collections.
—Kelly Link

In The Wizard’s Homecoming, Elwin Cotman offers his readers an opportunity to imagine reality as we might like it to be. Whether it’s poetry that describes a subculture of anarcho-punks, squatters and folk-heroes like Valerie Solanos or prose that follows a wizard ‘to the edge of the galaxy…across the surface of Mercury…onto a Wyoming prairie stippled with tall grass’ to another adventure, Cotman attunes his readers to spaces & times set within &/or against late capitalism. Through processes of defamiliarization, displacement and cognitive estrangement, new openings for radical transformation begin to seem possible. I found myself contemplating the possibility of existing in more than three dimensions & the possibility of communication across dimensions between people trying to get free.
—Wendy Trevino

Elwin Cotman’s The Wizard’s Homecoming fills a void in black poetry, serving scathing critiques of white oppression and the black bourgeoisie. It’s Afro-punk, ‘punk-adjacent,’ outsider gaze will keep you turning pages and following the footsteps of a black rebel protagonist whose insights spare no one. From love letters to Valerie Solanas and time leaps to the Tulsa Oklahoma Massacre, it’s an unexpected, fast-paced adventure that startles with its magic, complexity, contemplations, and rage.
—Yona Harvey

The Wizard’s Homecoming, Elwin Michael Cotman’s hybrid collection of poems and prose, unmasks tyrants, calls bullshit, and uses fantasy to improve reality. Cotman, like his speaker and protagonist, is an extraterrestrial anarchist who understands Earth better than its own inhabitants. His writing embodies the elements of punk that remain relevant; it elevates those who do not benefit from capitalist-patriarchal systems while condemning and occasionally even conquering those who do. It’s also got ferocious feminist attitude. Valerie Salonas would approve.
—Kim Vodicka