Tula (ePub)

A debut poetry collection exploring themes of family and identity while examining the experiences of a second-generation Filipino immigrant in America.

Tula: a ruined Toltec capital; a Russian city known for its accordions; Tagalog for "poem."

Prismatic, startling, rich with meaning yet sparely composed, Chris Santiago's debut collection of poems-selected by A. Van Jordan as the winner of the 2016 Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry-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?

Inspired by the experiences of the second-generation immigrant who does not fully acquire the language of his parents, Tula paints the portrait of a mythic homeland that is part ghostly underworld, part unknowable paradise. Language splinters. Impossible islands form an archipelago across its landscape. A mother sings lullabies and a father works the graveyard shift in Saint Paul-while in the Philippines, two dissident uncles and a grandfather send messages and telegrams from the afterlife.

Deeply ambitious, a collection that examines the shortcomings and possibilities of both language and poetry themselves, Tula introduces a major new literary talent.

Praise for Tula

"A book that both transports us and transforms us." -Viet Thanh Nguyen

"A debut collection that is a spare, elegant engagement with language.... Santiago's struggles with identity are well-explored, but his linguistic savvy and precision truly stand out." -Publishers Weekly

"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