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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