LUISA A. IGLORIA (previously published as Maria Luisa Aguilar-Cariño) is poet and Associate Professor in the MFA Creative Writing Program and Department of English, Old Dominion University. Her work has appeared or will be forthcoming in numerous anthologies and journals including Poetry, Crab Orchard Review, The Missouri Review, Indiana Review, Poetry East, Smartish Pace, Rattle, The North American Review, Bellingham Review, Shearsman (UK), PRISM International (Canada),The Asian Pacific American Journal, and TriQuarterly.
Various national and international literary awards include the 2009 Ernest Sandeen Poetry Prize for Juan Luna's Revolver (University of Notre Dame Press), the 2007 49th Parallel Poetry Prize (selected by Carolyne Wright for the Bellingham Review), the 2007 James Hearst Poetry Prize (selected by former US Poet Laureate Ted Kooser for the North American Review); Finalist, the 2007 Lynda Hull Memorial Prize in Poetry (Crazyhorse); Finalist, the 2007 Indiana Review Poetry Prize; the 2006 National Writers Union Poetry Prize (selected by Adrienne Rich); the 2006 Richard Peterson Poetry Prize (Crab Orchard Review); the 2006 Stephen Dunn Award for Poetry; Finalist, the 2005 George Bogin Memorial Award for Poetry (Poetry Society of America, selected by Joy Harjo); the 2004 Fugue Poetry Prize(selected by Ellen Bryant Voigt); Finalist, the 2003 Larry Levis Editors Prize for Poetry from The Missouri Review; Finalist, the 2003 Dorset Prize (Tupelo Press); the first Sylvia Clare Brown Fellowship from the Ragdale Foundation (2007); a 2003 partial fellowship to the Summer Literary Seminars in St. Petersburg; two Pushcart Prize nominations; a 1998 Fellowship at the Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers in Lasswade, the Midlothians, Scotland; and the 1998 George Kent Award for Poetry.
Originally from Baguio City in the Philippines, Luisa is also an eleven-time recipient of the Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Literature in three genres (poetry, nonfiction, and short fiction); the Palanca award is the Philippines' highest literary distinction. She has published 10 books including JUAN LUNA'S REVOLVER (University of Notre Dame Press, 2009 Ernest Sandeen Prize in Poetry); TRILL & MORDENT (WordTech Editions, 2005; Co-Winner of the 2007 Global Filipino Literary Awards in Poetry); ENCANTO (Anvil, 2004); and IN THE GARDEN OF THE THREE ISLANDS (Moyer Bell/Asphodel, 1995.
A lush, lyrical mediation on time & nostalgia, love & lament, and a reckoning with the effects of colonization, both emotional and ecological. This collection invites you to remember, reflect, and rejoice.
From the opening of the very first poem—“Read: porch / as reproach, aperture / as rapture,” Igloria writes urgently but with lyric intensity, creating surprising intersections among soundplay, climate research, and emotional heft. Language, place, and history have long been this distinguished poet's major subjects and they permeate this collection, too, but I also see deep exploration of how mindful attention to beauty can heal us after loss. Caulbearer reaches out to readers to forge a community of attention. In our apparent isolation, she writes, “we could be an archipelago,” connected even when apart.