Craig Santos Perez is the author of four books of poetry, coeditor of three anthologies of Pacific literature, and cofounder of Ala Press. He is an indigenous Chamorro from the Pacific Island of Guam and, in 2010, was recognized in a resolution by the Guam Legislature as "an accomplished poet who has been a phenomenal ambassador for our island, eloquently conveying through his words, the beauty and love that is the Chamorro culture." He lives in Aiea, Hawai'i.
"'There's no half-life of sorrow when our children / inherit this
toxic legacy, ' Craig Santos Perez writes in Habitat Threshold--and
though he is referring specifically to nuclear energy, the line
colors everything in the book. No half-life to sorrow: but unending
sorrow and rage and terror, expressed in blazing and eloquent
poems, at the barely imaginable environmental crisis that has
become our world. And still, somehow, tenderness. 'I love you
without knowing how or when this world / will end, ' Santos Perez
writes in 'Love in a Time of Climate Change, ' a poem for his wife,
which perhaps speaks also to his little daughter, to the creatures
and mountains and sea and air, to us all."
--Ann Fisher-Wirth, author and coeditor of The Ecopoetry
Anthology
"Craig Santos Perez is a writer I seriously watch. He includes a
variety of environmentally important writing, seamlessly combined
with history, politics, and the familial."
--Linda Hogan, writer and environmentalist
"Craig Santos Perez returns poetry to its ancient vocation: not
only to sing of the dark times, in a public voice, but to sing in
and against the darkness. Always exquisite in his attention to the
placement of words for power, beauty, and insight, with Habitat
Threshold Perez raises poetry to earth magnitude: his pastorals,
odes, sonnets, haikus, recyclings, occasional verse, lullabies, and
chants sing plainly and with great precision of the vast and
intricate inequalities in and through which world-ecology enmeshes
us. These are songs of protest, to be recited in places of public
debate and decision, and to be learned by children, but also love
songs, for family, place, plant and animal, celebrating the
many-hued lifeways of humans and their others. The poems find music
in inconvenient truths, with a sobering and detailed indictment of
our Capitalocene footprint. Habitat Threshold asks us to change our
lives: it is motivating, necessary, and inspiring work."
--Jonathan Skinner, poet, editor, and founder of Ecopoetics
"Essential. Read this book."
--Camille Dungy, poet and editor of Black Nature: Four Centuries of
African American Nature Poetry
"In this most recent collection, Craig Santos Perez interweaves
parental tenderness with knowledge of environmental crisis. With
poetic verve and acuity, Perez invites us to the bedside of our
ailing world. Formally inventive, these poems read like ritual. The
invitation is to come closer, to be with a troubled world. The
steady accumulation of these poems will move you to action."
--Melissa Tuckey, poet and editor of Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice
Poetry Anthology
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