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At Least This I Know
The powerful debut collection exploring ancestry, racism, nationhood, activism and queerness in a journey through childhood to adulthood. Part debut poetry collection, part journey through the author's life, At Least This I Know is a collection exploring ancestry, racism, nationhood, activism, and queerness. These poems are a means of working through belonging both in a physical sense and emotional. Be it the belonging of immigrant bodies in new countries, or the belonging of the queer self within found families and safe spaces. This debut confronts trauma and pain, while making space for joy and humour, and ultimately redemption.
180 pages, Paperback
First published January 27, 2022
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189 people want to read
About the author
Andrés N. Ordorica
5 books95 followersAndrés N. Ordorica is a queer Latinx writer based in Edinburgh. His writing seeks to illuminate love and loss while unpacking what it means to be from ni de aquí, ni de allá. He is the author of the poetry collection At Least This I Know and Holy Boys and the novel How We Named the Stars. He has been shortlisted for the Kavya Prize, Morley Lit Prize, Mo Siewcharran Prize and Saltire Society’s Poetry Book of The Year. In 2024, he was selected as one of The Observer’s 10 Best Debut Novelists. The following year he was named by The Skinny as one of 12 of Scotland’s Next Generation of Writers.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
July 24, 2025
got better the more you read, truly beautiful
February 20, 2022
At Least This I Know is a collection of poetry that explores belonging in a range of forms: nation, race, sexuality, family, future, and more. The book is split into sections - 'Where I begin', 'How I have grown', 'What I have lost', 'What I have given', 'He that I love' and 'Where I will burn' - and I really liked how this took you on a journey through the poems, enacting journeys of the poet and also giving a sense of going deeper into issues of belonging and self.
I knew I was going to like the collection from the first poem 'November 16th, 2014', which is a perfect opening for it: a moment at border control, encapsulating fear and desire for a place to belong, and a poem that almost makes you laugh and cry at once. From there, the collection moves on to images of family, like being passed photos around and told stories, and then onto growing up and queerness, loss, and place.
I really liked the use of repetition in many of the poems, used to various effects, for example in 'By the seashore', one of my favourites in the collection, in a way that really gets across how certain details can become entwined with grief and traumatic moments. Also, the repetition (and variation) in 'These pyramids are houses for the dead' stood out to me, especially with the font size changes, and the poem has such a powerful sense of place and what people can lay claim to.
I also like the understated love poetry in the collection, especially 'We are young and still have time' and 'It had been so long', which both have a beautiful sense not only of tiny moments of love, but also time, the seeming unreality of it and maybe how queerness impacts that, changing the effects of looking back or thinking of a future.
In short, I loved this collection, which captured me from the start, with its wit, phrasing and powerful simplicity combined with explorations of all sorts of things that make up a person and make them feel like they belong somewhere. Occasionally I had to pause reading at the end of a poem to think 'damn, that's good'.
I knew I was going to like the collection from the first poem 'November 16th, 2014', which is a perfect opening for it: a moment at border control, encapsulating fear and desire for a place to belong, and a poem that almost makes you laugh and cry at once. From there, the collection moves on to images of family, like being passed photos around and told stories, and then onto growing up and queerness, loss, and place.
I really liked the use of repetition in many of the poems, used to various effects, for example in 'By the seashore', one of my favourites in the collection, in a way that really gets across how certain details can become entwined with grief and traumatic moments. Also, the repetition (and variation) in 'These pyramids are houses for the dead' stood out to me, especially with the font size changes, and the poem has such a powerful sense of place and what people can lay claim to.
I also like the understated love poetry in the collection, especially 'We are young and still have time' and 'It had been so long', which both have a beautiful sense not only of tiny moments of love, but also time, the seeming unreality of it and maybe how queerness impacts that, changing the effects of looking back or thinking of a future.
In short, I loved this collection, which captured me from the start, with its wit, phrasing and powerful simplicity combined with explorations of all sorts of things that make up a person and make them feel like they belong somewhere. Occasionally I had to pause reading at the end of a poem to think 'damn, that's good'.
October 12, 2021
'Exhaling as both the old me, and the one about to drive away'.
AT LEAST THIS I KNOW does what I feel the best poetry collections do: it tells a story. A life, world, history, and self are held in Ordorica's narrative, as well as a sense of hope for the future too - evoked especially through the nature poems, which draw on the strength of desert soil and bird flight as they carry the reader to the collection's powerful conclusion.
Questioning and knowing are so present in this collection, as its title suggests, as Ordorica takes us on a journey from childhood to adulthood, through poems of family, love, religion, exploration, sex, fire and desire, and defiance and belonging. Ordorica's poems sing with honesty and courage as they tell of one's journey navigating their own path in the world, 'endlessly in search' of the self while also 'continuously rewriting' it. There is freedom here, and bravery, and the sense of poetry meeting a call to courage too: to be a lifesaver amid choppy waters, as evoked in ' The sea is rising'. To jump in.
Andrés N. Ordorica is a joyous voice on Scotland's poetry scene, and his debut collection AT LEAST THIS I KNOW is a powerful work of storytelling and voice. I can't wait for readers to meet its pages, and to listen to his words.
AT LEAST THIS I KNOW does what I feel the best poetry collections do: it tells a story. A life, world, history, and self are held in Ordorica's narrative, as well as a sense of hope for the future too - evoked especially through the nature poems, which draw on the strength of desert soil and bird flight as they carry the reader to the collection's powerful conclusion.
Questioning and knowing are so present in this collection, as its title suggests, as Ordorica takes us on a journey from childhood to adulthood, through poems of family, love, religion, exploration, sex, fire and desire, and defiance and belonging. Ordorica's poems sing with honesty and courage as they tell of one's journey navigating their own path in the world, 'endlessly in search' of the self while also 'continuously rewriting' it. There is freedom here, and bravery, and the sense of poetry meeting a call to courage too: to be a lifesaver amid choppy waters, as evoked in ' The sea is rising'. To jump in.
Andrés N. Ordorica is a joyous voice on Scotland's poetry scene, and his debut collection AT LEAST THIS I KNOW is a powerful work of storytelling and voice. I can't wait for readers to meet its pages, and to listen to his words.
June 18, 2022
Andrés took me on a journey, for a moment I had a grandfather, a husband and was a young gay man. The way he weaves storytelling into his poetry pulling threads out of his corazón.
Simply gorgeous 💖
Simply gorgeous 💖
March 27, 2024
Getting into this book, I thought it would make a swift run at a 5 stars, but now that I’ve finished it, I think 4 is more accurate of my reading experience as a whole. Definitely looking forward to reading “How We Named The Stars” though.
May 6, 2024
Really tender and honest collection that reminds me of Ocean Vuong’s early work. The way this is structured is nice and there are some real gems in here. Feels like a tight and complete package with key threads running throughout, examined and re-examined anew.
February 8, 2024
Simply wonderful!
July 22, 2024
Extraordinary voice, read after his novel. A wonderful connection between the prose and poetry.
August 26, 2024
3.75
pretty good tbh got a bit pretentious at the end there but it was bound to happen in a poetry book
pretty good tbh got a bit pretentious at the end there but it was bound to happen in a poetry book
November 12, 2024
Poetry always feels just a bit over my head, but I enjoyed this collection, especially its themes of home and immigration.
January 19, 2025
i really enjoyed some of these poems. loved how evocative the each setting was and the overall themes and sentiments. 3.5
February 12, 2025
Wow, it has been three years and this collection still slaps!
March 23, 2025
Explains its metaphors to death
May 30, 2022
Finally in the mindset for poetry and finished this proof copy from 404ink, thank you!
A really beautiful collection with almost a narrative, an biography of Ordorica’s life so far. Phasing from blue to red in colour and feel, I loved a lot of the imagery. Occasionally some of the phrasing took me out of the flow of the blank verse, and some pieces that felt on the verge of rhyme. I really disliked the references to live-streaming and selfies and scrolling towards the end - I am a bit of a purist it turns out and don’t feel like these fleeting features of modern life have any place in such a timeless and enduring form as poetry.
A really beautiful collection with almost a narrative, an biography of Ordorica’s life so far. Phasing from blue to red in colour and feel, I loved a lot of the imagery. Occasionally some of the phrasing took me out of the flow of the blank verse, and some pieces that felt on the verge of rhyme. I really disliked the references to live-streaming and selfies and scrolling towards the end - I am a bit of a purist it turns out and don’t feel like these fleeting features of modern life have any place in such a timeless and enduring form as poetry.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews