How Poetry Makes a Home

One week till Marc Perez reads at Green College!

Dear Friends,

We look forward to gathering in one week to listen to Marc Perez read Dayo.

January 22nd, 2025
5 - 6:30 pm (followed by dinner in the Green College dining hall)
Coach House, Green College, University of British Columbia

If you live far away, or you can’t make it to the cozy coach house of Green College that evening, you’re welcome to follow along from home via Livestream.

If you show up in person, you may well leave with your own copy of Dayo, as we’ve used our series budget to purchase copies for folks to follow along during the reading and take home after.

A Poem Preview

I first read Dayo while preparing a graduate poetry course focused on poetry as a deeply relational act. As I read, I was struck by the depth (and breadth) of relationality present across this volume—italicized lines drawn from Harsha Walia, José Martí, Joy Harjo, and Albert Camus jostle alongside epigraphs from José Garcia Villa, Ada Limón, and Etel Adnan.

As much as this book describes diasporic consciousness and difficulties of departure and belonging, it also shows how poetry can create conversations and connections that extend across time, space, and language. In poems like “Body of Water,” Perez measures the waters of childhood against the brackish deltas of the Salish Sea and reaches out in direct address with an invitation.

Body of Water

Home is a place where rivers meet
the sea. Fill my lungs with brackish
delta water. Estero de Tripa de Gallina,
childhood memory’s tributary, stagnant
in black silt and methane—only the dead
remember your lilies. But this is no longer
about drowning. I’ve outgrown my fear
of letting go. This is surrender, a body
defying buoyancy—sunken and supine
on the seabed like the sedimented hull
of a capsized ship. Reel in my feet
from a cerulean reef, swathed in seaweed.
There’s room for you here—a soft bed
among corals. Come, I’ll breathe you in.

Join Us for Dinner

There’s still time to reserve a meal in the Green College Dining Hall after the event. Meal tickets are available for $25 for non-students and $20 for students and must be reserved by noon the previous day (January 21st) using this Google form. If you’re a UBC student who’s interested in joining the meal, be sure you’ve completed this form to join the mailing list. Bronwen will send an email later today to see who’s interested/available!

Upcoming Whole Cloth Events

For our final reading of the year, we’d like to invite you, our poetry community, to join us for a special group reading on April 2nd at 5 pm. Details to come!

All the best from your hosts,

Bronwen and Elee