Poetry. Asian American Studies. Barbara Jane Reyes's POETA EN SAN FRANCISCO (Tinfish Press) is a linguistic tour de force, incorporating English, Spanish, and Tagalog in a book-length poem at once lush and experimentally rigorous. From the vantage of San Francisco, Reyes looks outward to the Philippines, Vietnam, and other colonized places with violent histories. As she said in a recent interview, "It's almost a cliché, the phrase, 'the personal is political,' but certainly, this is a strong consideration in my work." And yet, it is not only violence that concerns Reyes: "I am interested in how we come to love in this world, despite the historical circumstances, the conquests, the wars, which have created us as a diasporic people, as exiles, and refugees." This is an ambitious, sweeping and necessary work. Reyes has won the James Laughlin Award for a second book from the Academy of American Poets for this volume.

Author Hometown: OAKLAND, CA USA



About the author: Barbara Jane Reyes is the author of Diwata (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2010), recently noted as a finalist for the California Book Award. She was born in Manila, Philippines, raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, and is the author of two previous collections of poetry, Gravities of Center (Arkipelago Books, 2003) and POETA EN SAN FRANCISCO (Tinfish Press, 2006), which received the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets.

Reviews:
author site
Craig Santos Perez @ Rain Taxi
Joyelle McSweeney @ Zoland Poetry
Nicole Cartwright Denison @ Blue Fifth Review