A Geography That Does Not Hurt Us

Carla Sofia Ferreira's debut poetry collection A Geography That Does Not Hurt Us lives and breathes longing and saudade--across immigrant generations, across city streets and bus stops, parks and gardens, continents and oceans. With a great tenderness of attention, Ferreira travels between the song traditions of the ode and elegy, the prayer, and the fado. To long is also to understand many layers of loss, from inhumane immigration laws to the cruelty of climate change, and these present realities and crises inform the context in which the poet asks: how do we create a world that will not hurt us? These are poems for immigrant daughters, poems for Newark's Ironbound and Portugal, poems for anyone who has felt grief or distance or loss--across time zones, across geographies.