Reliquaria

by R.A. Villanueva

Winner, 2013 Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry

In his prize-winning poetry collection Reliquaria, R. A. Villanueva embraces liminal spaces in considering an ever-evolving Filipino American identity. Languages and cultures collide; mythologies and faiths echo and resound. Part haunting, part prayer, part prophecy, these poems resonate with the voices of the dead and those who remember them. In this remarkable book, we enter the vessel of memory, the vessel of the body. The dead act as witness, the living as chimera, and we learn that whatever the state of the body, this much rings true: every ode is an elegy; each elegy is always an ode.
 

Genres: Poetry

82 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2014

About the author

R. A. Villanueva is the author of A Holy Dread, winner of the Alice James Award (forthcoming in 2026), and Reliquaria, winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize (U. Nebraska Press, 2014). New work has been featured by the Academy of American Poets and National Public Radio—and his writing appears widely in international publications such as Poetry London and The Poetry Review. His honors include commendations from the Forward Prizes and fellowships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.