Craig Santos Perez

cantfindit

Craig Santos Perez is a native Chamoru (Chamorro) from the Pacific Island of Guåhan/Guam. He is the co-founder of Ala Press, co-star of the poetry album Undercurrent (Hawai’i Dub Machine, 2011), and author of three collections of poetry: from unincorporated territory [hacha] (Tinfish Press, 2008), from unincorporated territory [saina](Omnidawn, 2010), and from unincorporated territory [guma'] (Omnidawn, 2014). He has been a finalist for the LA Times 2010 Book Prize for Poetry and the winner of the 2011 PEN Center USA Literary Award for Poetry. He is director of the Creative Writing program and an assistant professor of English at the University of Hawai’i, Manoa, where he teaches Pacific literature and creative writing. Source

ars pasifika

when the tide

 

 

of silence

 

 

rises

 

 

say “ocean”

 

 

then with the paddle

 

 

of your tongue

 

 

rearrange

 

 

the letters to form

 

 

“canoe”

Published:

2020

Length:

Shorty

Literary Movements:

Contemporary

Anthology Years:

2025

Themes:

Ars Poetica

Faith & Hope

Nature

Literary Devices:

Caesura

a break between words within a metrical foot

Conditional Statement

statements of an “if-then” or “unless-then” situation (although “then” is not used), or a probability

Enjambment

a line break interrupting the middle of a phrase which continues on to the next line

Metaphor

a comparison between two unrelated things through a shared characteristic