All the Words I Can Remember Are Poems

by Michelle Peñaloza

Winner of the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets

All The Words I Can Remember Are Poems challenges colonized ideas of history and truth, particularly in relation to Filipinx/a/o history and its colonization by the United States. Engaging with archival materials and playing with the sounds of remembered words and their unique associations, Michelle Peñaloza confronts violent and ironic tensions within historical narratives, subverting erasure and creating her own cultural fluency that speaks to growing up in diaspora and the complexities of identity, motherhood, and the transmission of love across generations. The expression and reception of love between parent and child, particularly Filipinx/a mothers and daughters, becomes its own translation, a generational game of telephone across time and space. In conversation with the history of US imperialism and the broader implications of colonization, this book embraces the impotence of revision, the power of the always-reaching―what wisdom and connection we find there. 10 collages by the author accompany the poems

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

Published September 16, 2025

About the author

Michelle Peñaloza is author of two chapbooks, landscape/heartbreak (Two Sylvias, 2015), and Last Night I Dreamt of Volcanoes (Organic Weapon Arts, 2015). Her full-length collection, Former Possessions of the Spanish Empire, which recently won the 2018 Hillary Gravendyk National Poetry Prize, will be published in Fall 2019 . Her work can be found in Prairie Schooner, upstreet, Vinyl, and The Collagist, with poems forthcoming in The Normal School and Third Coast. Michelle is a Kundiman fellow, and a former Made at Hugo House Fellow. She is the recent recipient of the 2019 Scotti Merrill Emerging Writer Award for Poetry from The Key West Literary Seminar, as well as scholarships from VONA Voices and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, among others. Michelle lives in rural Northern California.

Reviews

[Patricia N. McLaughlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five-star fabulous! In this collection, the poet explores her Filipino heritage through a variety of lenses—archival research, family stories, personal anecdotes, newspaper headlines, popular culture—unearthing the past with its dark secrets and history of violence and making peace with the ghosts; reclaiming her identity and mother tongue while living in diaspora with the descendants of conquest; and invoking the resilience of her ancestors while infusing her heirs with the power of perseverance, hard-earned wisdom, and everlasting love. The evocative collages that appear throughout the book were also created by the poet. This brilliant collection is the deserving winner of the 2024 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets and all the other accolades heaped upon it. What a talent!


Favorite Poems:
“All the Words I Can Remember Are Poems”
“Why Not End This Experiment?”
“Waves”
“Attempts at Order”
“Zodiac”
“Pagdadalamhati”
“Hangang Sa Muli”
“Kalungkutan”
“Stereograph: The Bones of the Tenants Whose Burial Rental Was Not Renewed—Santa Cruz Cemetery, Manila, 1899”
“Mga Manananggal Speak”
“The Captions Are Handwritten”
“Deals Only We Only Got Deals”
“Just Saying”
“Portrait at 38”
“To My Little One (and Their Little One and Their Little One), Long After I Am Gone” *

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of poems about family, identity, language, being Filipina, and love.

from Waves: "so many to lose in a family / of twelve born / from the impossibility / of one woman's ability to / say no. Yes born from necessity / born from war. Is that why / prayer always provides / the safest balm?"

from Kailangan: "All the women / in my family / are needed / to needle / themselves into / whatever everyone / else needs."

from Kalungkutan: "and so we build new gods and universes, / strike bargains for epic consequences: / if I find that old notebook, I will not have / lost my memories of you; if I still manage / to keep safe the note you wrote me four- / teen years ago, it will mean I can keep you here."

[Jess · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kailangan
All the women
in my family
are needed
and needle
themselves into
whatever everyone
else needs.
No one ever
announces what
is needed,
which is nothing,
needless to say.