Gold Rush

From the Klondike to an all-girls summer camp to the frontier of outer space, Gold Rush
explores what it means to be a settler woman in the wilderness. Drawing
on and subverting portrayals of nature from Susanna Moodie to Cheryl
Strayed, Caldwell’s poems examine the tension between the violence and
empowerment women have often sought and found in wild places; this is
the violence young girls inflict on each other; colonial violence
perpetrated by white, settler women; violence against nature itself.
Many of these poems portray a climate in crisis, suggesting that even
wilderness buffs are complicit in climate change. Whether they’re
trekking the Chilkoot Trail, exploring the frontiers of their own bodies
and desires, or navigating an unstable, unfamiliar climate, the girls
and women in these poems are pioneers—in all the complexities contained
by the term.