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	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Marie Arendt
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Poetry

THE DIASPORA SONNETS

Oliver de la Paz

For fans of Diane Seuss and Victoria Chang, a coruscating collection that eloquently invokes the perseverance and myth of the Filipino diaspora in America.

"My father forfeits field and nation / and I dream nothing into these turning skies." In 1972, after Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law, Oliver de la Paz's father, in a last fit of desperation to leave the Philippines, threw his papers at an immigration clerk, hoping to get them stamped. He was prepared to leave, having already quit his job and exchanged pesos for dollars; but he couldn't anticipate the migratory lifestyle he and his family would soon adopt in America. Their search for a sense of "home" is evocatively explored by award-winning poet de la Paz in this formally inventive collection of sonnets. Poems flit with dulcet lyricism and nostalgia from coast to coast, across prairies and deserts, along the way musing on shadowy dreams of a faraway country. With a virtuoso's deft touch, The Diaspora Sonnets break and rejoin poetic tradition, powerfully capturing the peculiar pangs of a diaspora "that has left and is forever leaving." Oliver de la Paz is the author of six poetry collections, including The Boy in the Labyrinth, a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award. A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, he teaches at the College of the Holy Cross and lives in Holden, Massachusetts.

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Book Published 2023-07-18 by Liveright

Comments

One of Oliver de la Paz's gifts is his sense of the book as a whole. In his latest, he turns the sonnet into a lens for slow-motion snapshots of migration... Amidst poems rich in details of the resulting changing natural landscapes emerge vivid portraits: we see the father in his twenties holding a hatbox, later, a gun... Every "Diaspora Sonnet" holds this label as part of its title, the pointed repetition pounding impactfully, each section bookended by a "Chain Migration" ballad and a punctuating final pantoum, a reminder of these poems' origins. Read more...

de la Paz employs language both soft-spoken and surprising to elevate the sonnet in his sixth collection of poems... An accomplished mid-career poet, de la Paz joins the likes of Diane Seuss and Laurie Ann Guerrero in pushing the sonnet's form into brilliant new shapes for today's readers.

The Boston Globe featured author in piece about being named Poet Laureate of Worcester Read more...

The thoughtful latest from de la Paz... explores his family's experience of the Filipino diaspora... The struggle to create a home in exile is vividly rendered in poems that trace the family's journeys over the decades: 'We wanted to construct a livable world/ but the pieces didn't fit.' This haunting collection sheds new light on the migrant's experience of loss and longing. Read more...

enjambments interview: Oliver de la Paz Read more...

Oliver de la Paz on Absences and Using the Form of the Sonnet to Capture Life in a Diaspora The Poet on His New Collection The Diaspora Sonnets Read more...