Each day we highlight one of the 36 finalists leading up to the April 8 announcement of the Minnesota Book Awards, presented by Education Minnesota. Today we feature 2017 Poetry finalist:
Tula by Chris Santiago
Published by: Milkweed Editions
Category Sponsor: Wellington Management, Inc.
Tula: a ruined Toltec capital; a Russian city known for its accordions; Tagalog for “poem.” Inspired by the experiences of the “blood stranger”—the second-generation immigrant who does not fully acquire the language of his parents—Chris Santiago’s debut collection of poems begins with one word and transforms it, in a dazzling sleight of hand, into a multivalent symbol for the immigrant experience. Tula: Santiago reveals to readers a distant land devastated by war. Tula: its music beckons in rhythms, time signatures, and lullabies. Tula: can the poem, he seems to ask, build an imaginative bridge back to a family lost to geography, history, and a forgotten language? Prismatic, startling, rich with meaning yet sparely composed—a collection that examines the shortcomings and possibilities of both language and poetry themselves—Tula announces the arrival of a major new literary talent.
About the Author:
Chris Santiago’s first collection of poetry, Tula, is winner of the 2016 Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry, selected by A. Van Jordan. His poems, fiction, and criticism have appeared in FIELD, Copper Nickel, Pleiades, and the Asian American Literary Review. He holds degrees in creative writing and music from Oberlin College and received his PhD in English from the University of Southern California. The recipient of fellowships from Kundiman and the Mellon Foundation/American Council of Learned Societies, Santiago is also a percussionist and amateur jazz pianist. He teaches literature, sound culture, and creative writing at the University of St. Thomas.
Rave Reviews:
“Santiago seems to recognize that words will always hold power, even as their meanings evolve. Through everything, Tula delves into these nuances of language: how it is suppressed, how it is weaponized, how it loves, how it informs, and how it is often as fleeting as a birdsong. Tula is therefore a celebration of the ephemeral and the permanent, a lovely testament to the beauty of contradiction.” – Chicago Review of Books
“Santiago examines the second-generation-immigrant experience in a debut collection that is a spare, elegant engagement with language…his linguistic savvy and precision truly stand out.” – Publisher’s Weekly
“The translation of the untranslatable was utterly amazing as Santiago tries to bring the stories of his parents’ Filipino past—which is split into two dialects—into his own completely American ethos. The poems are done so deftly and yet with such honesty. English may not always be enough to do the job, but poetry is.” – MN Book Awards judge
Beyond the Book:
Article: “How this son of immigrants reimagined his parents’ homeland,” by Mary Jo Brooks, PBS News Hour