Oliver de la Paz and Rita Mookerjee
Poetry Reading
Thursday, December 7 at 7pm

The Diaspora Sonnets by Oliver de la Paz
Long-listed for the National Book Award in Poetry
Winner of the New England Award for Poetry

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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 having exchanged pesos for dollars; but he couldn’t anticipate the challenges of the migratory lifestyle he and his family would soon adopt in America. Their search for a sense of “home” and boundless feelings of deracination are evocatively explored by award-winning poet de la Paz in this formally inventive collection of sonnets.

Broken into three parts—“The Implacable West,” “Landscape with Work, Rest, and Silence,” and “Dwelling Music”—The Diaspora Sonnets eloquently invokes the perseverance and bold possibilities of de la Paz’s displaced family as they strove for stability and belonging.

The Diaspora Sonnets powerfully captures the peculiar pangs of a diaspora “that has left and is forever leaving.”

Oliver de la Paz is the Poet Laureate of Worcester, MA for 2023-2025. He is the author and editor of seven books: Names Above Houses, Furious Lullaby, Requiem for the Orchard, Post Subject: A Fable, and The Boy in the Labyrinth, His newest work, The Diaspora Sonnets, was published by Liveright Press in June 2023.

National Book Award in poetry. With Stacey Lynn Brown he co-edited A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry. A founding member, Oliver serves as the co-chair of the Kundiman advisory board. He has received grants from the NEA, NYFA, the Artist’s Trust, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and has been awarded multiple Pushcart Prizes. He teaches at the College of the Holy Cross and in the Low-Residency MFA Program at PLU. Scroll down to see a complete list of Oliver's books.

False Offering by Rita Mookerjee

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Rita Mookerjee's False Offering, while providing a trenchant critique of the oppressiveness of "white space," is also glittery, culinary sumptuous, and scythe sharp. Shot through with equal parts "nectar and venom," Mookerjee's poems pirouette with muscular grace in a kaleidoscopic whirl of myth and alchemy, gods and feasts, rot and rose gold. False Offering is a feminist ledger of "battle armor meeting ballet." Like a medieval tapestry, it is piped through with an elaborate galaxy of nightviolets, rosewater, bonedust, "snakes and shibari," origami, and the KKK. It is a rare book in that even while flipping the middle finger; it has its hands held out in tenderness to those in need. ―Simone Muench, Poetry Editor, JackLeg Press

Rita Mookerjee is an Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Worcester State University. In 2020, she was a Fulbright Research Fellow in Kingston, Jamaica. She is the author of False Offering, (JackLeg 2023). Her poems can be found in CALYX, Copper Nickel, New Orleans Review, the Offing, and Poet Lore. She serves as an editor at Split Lip Magazine, Sundress Publications, and Honey Literary.