Barbara jane reyes biography of michael

  • Author, Letters to a Young Brown Girl (BOA Editions 2020), Invocation to Daughters (City Lights 2017) & others.
  • I am drawn to poems and stories in which the storyteller/poet uses the poem/story to figure out her state of being multiple and hybrid.
  • Barbara Jane Reyes is aa Filipina American poet raised in the San Francisco Bay Area.

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    Barbara Jane Reyes – Poetry

    We spit fire girl, we golden in the breath

    We palabra, Pinay, know that we legit

    We speak our piece; in the letting, rejoice

    We en samling dokument eller en elektronisk lagring av data our fangs, girl, we got to bite down

    We loosen our grip, we widen our sight

    We street smart, whip smart; word is our bond

    We diwa, Pinay, our psalms be our salt

    We diva, diwata; our voices, for real

    We badass, we deep; our birthright, our roar

    We surge and swell, sing holy and sutra

    We cut, snap, strike; we no damn hot air

    We handle ourselves, we our own, we be

    We say our names, we säga no, we say no

    We spit fire girl, we golden, we got this

    Barbara Jane Reyesis the author of Diwata (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2010), winner of theGlobal Filipino Literary Award for Poetry and a finalist for the California Book Award. She was born in Manila, Philippines, raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, and is the author of two previous collections of poetry, Gravities of Center(Arkipelago Books, 2003) and Poeta en San Fr

  • barbara jane reyes biography of michael

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    Talking with Barbara Jane Reyes

    Next up on my beachshelf is Barbara Jane Reyes' newest collection, Diwata (BOA Editions, 2010). Although I've never taken a class with Barbara, her poetics, criticism, editorial vision, community activism, generosity, and overall badass-ness have deeply influenced me (and many others). Being the generous poet she fryst vatten, she agreed to answer a few questions about her work. Thanks Barbara!

    CSP: Your new book, Diwata, is populated with Diwata, Duyong, Aswang, Eve, mermaids, a wolf spirit, El Mas Supremo, and many other “mythic” and storied beings from Filipino, Western, and indigenous cultures. How did these beings enter your work? How do you approach writing and re-writing mythos? What have you learned about “traditional” berättande by engaging in “mythmaking”?

    BJR: These beings enter my work because I am always looking for someone other than myself to “tell the story,” or to be the speaker, as inom prefer to think about my own stories, and those o

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    August 30, 2011DIWATA by Barbara Jane ReyesBarbara Jane Reyes

    Review by Jessica Varin

    DIWATA
    by Barbara Jane Reyes

    BOA Editions, Ltd.
    250 North Goodman Street, Suite 306
    Rochester, NY 14607
    ISBN 978-1934414378
    2010, 88 pp., $16.00
    www.boaeditions.org

    Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to speak my mother’s first language.

    Would I seem more Chinese and less white? Would I feel less fractionated? Would I blend into Asian-America with ease?

    I don’t know the answers to these questions. I could spend a lifetime speculating; instead, I have chosen to create a new culture for people like me. There is no instruction manual, so I look to the creative work of those who stand at the intersect of two cultures.

    Barbara Jane Reyes is busy (re-)creating a culture. In Diwata, she dreamweaves what is and isn’t remembered through prose and line broken poems. Her third collection explores metamorphosis amid two cultures and tongues.

    In “Polyglot Incan