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MIGRATIONS & OTHER EXILES

MIGRATIONS & OTHER EXILES

$21.00Price

ISBN: 978-8-9865715-4-6

Pub Date: Spring 2023

Pages: 72


By Letitia Cruz


WINNER OF THE IDAHO PRIZE FOR POETRY 2022


Letitia Cruz’s latest collection, Migrations & Other Exiles, many years in the making, includes poems that began as simple explorations of the poet's past and as a way of accepting the violence of her youth without fear or self-judgment. The poems explore immigrant issues, exile, Latina/minority women’s issues, the death of father, mother’s experience with domestic violence, and relationships of youth.


    With a Bachelardian dreaminess and a poetic language that is both sensuous and incisive, Migrations and Other Exiles questions the contradictory nature of human love. Right from the opening poem, “Promise,” the speaker attempts to shape an unidentified other into a graceful swan-like survivor only to renege: “I carved her neck long/so that when the rains came / she might hold it above /water. You will not drown, / I promised her. But then her/ mouth and eyes filled and I/let them. What begins with hope, complex and lucent—a flight of spirit—often ends with the rarity or inability to fly: “Remember that one time / we flew? Like we were birds/ with thrift-store wings.” Other times, it’s the literal, hard-hitting world of self-harming burns and gunshots that violate the boundaries of self. Precise and elegant, redemptive in its musicality and stunning imagery, Migrations and Other Exiles is a remarkable, stand-out, collection.

    —Dzvinia Orlowsky, Final Judge for the Idaho Prize 2022


     Letisia Cruz is a Cuban-American writer and artist. She is the author of The Lost Girls Book of Divination (Tolsun Books, 2018) and Migrations & Other Exiles (Lost Horse Press, 2023), which was awarded the 2022 Idaho Prize for Poetry. She is the recipient of a 2022 artist grant from the St. Petersburg Arts Alliance and was selected as a 2022 Dali Dozen Emerging Artist for her project Rituales: An Exploration of Faith in the Caribbean. Her writing and artwork have appeared in [PANK], Ninth Letter, The Acentos Review, Gulf Stream, Saw Palm, Third Coast, and Duende, among others. She is a graduate of Fairleigh Dickinson University’s MFA program, a member of the Artist Enclave of Historic Kenwood, and lives in St. Petersburg, Florida. 

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