Past and Parallel Lives

by Kaya Ortiz

Genres: Poetry

136 pages, Paperback

Published March 1, 2025

Reviews

[ellie · Rating 5 out of 5]

incredibly gorgeous debut — intense, finely observed, and achingly beautiful

[nina.reads.books · Rating 4 out of 5]

Past & Parallel Lives is the debut poetry collection of Kaya Ortiz. This work won the 2024 Dorothy Hewett award for an unpublished manuscript through UWA Publishing. Kaya's bio says that they are a queer Filipino poet of in/articulate identities and record-keeper of ancient histories. I love that description!

Reading poetry is not something I do a lot of but I enjoyed my way through this collection. It is set over three parts - Requiem, Reincarnation, and Revelation. The poems wander through themes of queerness and coming out, racism and migration, feelings of belonging and yearning for home. There was also several poems scattered throughout based on female Star Trek characters which I thought added a whimsical quirkiness to the more serious poems.

I won't pretend to be the most intellectual of poetry readers but I enjoyed being able to read and skim read and sit with the feelings that the poems generate. This was a lovely and thought provoking collection. If you are interested in reading modern Australian poetry then consider giving Past & Parallel Lives a go.

Thank you to @uwapublishing and the author for my signed #gifted copy.

[Svetlana Sterlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘If I speak desire in another tongue will it make it less real?’

[birchie · Rating 5 out of 5]

WHERE HAS THIS BOOK BEEN ALL MY LIFE? REVOLUTIONARY.

[Amy Margaret · Rating 5 out of 5]

.....📚 𝑩𝒐𝒐𝒌 𝑹𝒆𝒗𝒊𝒆𝒘 📚.....

Past & Parallel Lives is the debut poetry collection from Kaya Ortiz. Kaya's work was the 2024 Dorothy Hewett winner. Kaya is a queer Filipino poet of in/articulate identities.

Past & Parallel Lives is a rippling reflection of being alien, queer, and other. Told over three parts, Requiem, Reincarnation, and Revelation. These poems take you through the authors yearning toward home and belonging. Laying bare their journey, and leaning into the past, they take the reader through migration, religion, coming out, and towards a queer future. Their authenticity about their intersectionality, their othering, while growing up queer, mixed raced, and religious in Australia.

This is a beautiful collection that left me feeling privileged to have been able to read. As always with collections, the whole of the journey through each poem was beautifully crafted, and there were a couple that I had to reread and sit with before moving to the next. Definitely one for poetry lovers to add to the shelf.
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Thank you @uwapublishing and Kaya Ortiz for my signed copy.

[James Whitmore · Rating 4 out of 5]

This collection begins with the poet on a departing flight from the Philippines, leaving a home: “lock its heavy air in your lungs.”. They are also leaving love, “the queer ache in her absence”. “Who will I be without?” they wonder. In the next poem, Migration Story, an early highlight, “the plane never lands”, “my skin, stuck in time”:

i exist everywhere […]

in my eternal departure

Read more on my blog.