Hi all — I am so happy to share that a spoken word album of my poetry book, Itinerant Songs, is now out in the world through the good folks at Hello America Stereo Cassette. Get yourself and some friends a copy of the cassette (!) and/or listen digitally on Bandcamp. I’ve recorded all 52 poems from my book for this special release. Can’t wait for you to listen — I’d love to hear what you think.

Listen: Itinerant Songs on Tape

"The poems keep strumming the big 'we'—we who tend the earth, who work underpaid jobs, who live in moldy homes and breathe in wildfire smoke. These populist prayers hum with aliveness. Here is the world so frankly recorded that it feels new." —Lora Mathis, author of The Snakes Came Back

Recommending:

Call This Mutiny (2024) by Craig Santos Perez

Diasporic Islander literature makes me feel so seen, and helps me see. I loved these poems and definitely want to read more of Craig Santos Pérez’ work now. He speaks from the Spirit grounded in true peoples’ history, centered on Guam and the Pacific island nations. A call for sovereignty and solidarity, from Guam to Hawai’i to Turtle Island to Palestine. Read this book.

I ring the Bonshō to the temple residents and the woods just after 6 in the morning. I see the moon in different places in the sky through all its phases. I no longer need a headlamp this early, the purple and blue of the morning just enough to see what is necessary to see. My attention is fixed on the seconds which can’t move any faster or slower than they do, 50 seconds can only be 50 seconds between rings. I hear the crows, the ravens, the quail laughter, an owl, many other unrecognized birds that I hope to become more familiar with. I wake up and go back to sleep again many times through the night and day.

The farmers plant their seeds. A new group of work practice apprentices arrive to ramp up the season. I continue to chop vegetables, make dressings, make soups, make friends. The nerves in my hand have a hard time of it. Tips of the fingers keep going numb, keep me up at night.

We harvest seaweed for the year on “state” land, one of the only places it’s legal to. Kombu and sea lettuce and others I can’t name but can eat. We meet early in the morning and finish before 8, when the tide starts to come in again. I eat straight off the rock, legs in the water. My ancestors harvest with me, singing their island songs.

One of my main goals this year is to read as many books as possible. Not for any particular reason other than the love of reading, to do more than carry books around with me wherever I go without opening them very often. It’s funny — now that I’m not a bookseller as my primary vocation, I’m reading so much more. I don’t think there’s a correlation beyond not having a job that burns me out so much (managing two bookstores for two years for much less than a living wage knocked me out).

A few things are contributing to putting this fire for reading under me — one of which is realizing that the amount of TV I watched in the last 5 years could have added up to reading more than 100 books, which is way less than the number of unread books I have on my bookshelf that I don’t want to leave unread for the rest of my life. And reading and supporting books is a much higher personal value of mine than watching TV; something I’m not even really interested in in theory, but I’ve leaned to automatically when tired, exhausted, under-rested.

It’s now been about 80 days since I’ve watched TV alone. Not that it’s a hard boundary for me, but watching TV alone while living at a Zen Center feels so out of place at the moment, and I know myself enough to know that once I start watching a show, I will fill all of my downtime with that show until I’ve exhausted every episode through long hours of zombie binges. So replacing reading time with TV time has been huge for me. That, and being a bit over 5 months in to drastically limiting social media time (i.e. going back to my boundary of only going on social media when I have a creatively-aligned posting plan, and catching up on messages for about 5-10 minutes).

Also — being on a prescribed medication for the first time in my life for anxiety/depression/pain. I am amazed at my ability to concentrate and direct my full attention to reading when I am not constantly seeking ways to distract myself from my thoughts and pain. My work schedule is also pretty spacious, which I try to intentionally fill with reading and rest time. I work in a Zen kitchen about 5 hours a day 5 days a week, meditate and do ceremonies in community about 2-3 hours a day, and otherwise eat, talk to people, clean and organize, walk around, do recovery stuff, and read. That, for the most part, is what my life is looking like these days. I am very happy about it.

Recommending:

There There (2018) by Tommy Orange

If Wandering Stars made me a Tommy Orange fan, There There made me want to be a cult follower. More Tommy Orange please. For everyone. Require it.

Heaven Is All Goodbyes (2018) by Tongo Eisen-Martin

First poetry book read for National Poetry Month and 15th book read this year. Tongo Eisen-Martin’s poetry is brilliant, a mosaic of impressions, real. Definitely a poetry book I’ll need to revisit and keep chewing on.

Some favorite lines:

“everything we know of duty, we made up”

“a ten pound weight on your shoulders can kill you
if applied the american way”

“Waves do everything except rewind“

“The first white man invented the first flagpole

while inspired by the first hole he ever put in a human being“

“We are cheap people and therefore always gambling
World history has a proletariat when the lights come back on—“

“Warlords, run”

The Joy of the In-Between: 100 Devotions for Trusting God In Your Waiting Season (2024) by Ashley Hetherington

Since my 33rd birthday in September, my daily reflection routine has included prayer, a gratitude and powerlessness journaling exercise, and two daily readers. I have a firm boundary about not looking at anything on the internet, including email, before I complete this routine, even if I don’t get to it all until the afternoon. Connecting to God, to my body, to my in-person space before connecting to the online world.

Since New Year’s Day, I’ve been reading Ashley Hetherington’s The Joy of the In-Between: 100 Devotions for Trusting God In Your Waiting Season as one of my daily readers. Accessibly written and deeply hopeful, Hetherington uses modern, real life examples to apply God’s promises to our everyday day lives. Starting each day with this devotional, I felt inspired and reminded of my faith that I’m exactly where I need to be, even and especially when it doesn’t look like where I thought I would be or where everyone else seems to be. Or where others expect me to be! I can’t force things I thought would happen by now as a 33 year old wahine — marriage, kids, a thriving career, a home of my own with a family of my own — the things we’re taught to hope for growing up. I still want these things in my life, but less desperately than I used to — I hold the hopes more loosely and turn over the outcomes to God’s will and timeline. There are no guarantees, and that’s okay. I am on the path I’m meant to be on, and when I’m not, God redirects me.

This book is full of insight, bridging seemingly small daily matters to the wisdom and joy of God’s work in us. I very much recommend this warm, simple devotional.

Mystics and Zen Masters (1965) by Thomas Merton

Mystics and Zen Masters by Thomas Merton, Trappist (Catholic) monk who also wrote extensively about Zen, explores the mystical and monastic traditions of a variety of Christian and Eastern religions. I wouldn’t classify this as an introductory book — there were many references and terms without explanation that I did not understand at all — though I learned a lot about the histories of Zen and Christian monasticism across denominations and orders, and what each religion stands to learn from the other. There are also some viewpoints in several chapters I would definitely not endorse, but this book was worth chewing on, especially as a person of Christian faith who is currently a student and work apprentice of Soto Zen.

In reverence of objects

Holding each thing as if it were my own child, my own hand. An encounter, a meeting, an intimacy with a bowl, a cup, a knife, a bell. My own feet. A caring synonymous with carrying. Bowing to the cushion. Bowing to the bell. Ringing the large bell under the gibbous moon at 5 o’clock in the morning. Counting the ringing of the bell 18 times, once every 50 seconds. Long reverberation through the woods waking up. An object becoming a part of the posture, branching out from our own spine. Straightening our bodies to be closer to the present. Deepening the breath automatically. To walk the narrow way which is a point, an axis, the meeting place of the moment. Really in the body. The object also my body. The object my body. Our whole collective body. So much to tend to. So much to respect. Not trying to get from A to B; but from A, to A, to A.

A Pairing of Ravens

kika, trey, neill & i
have each befriended the ravens,
one large & one small,
who have taken up residence
here at Green Dragon Temple

trey keeps a pocketful of seeds
to feed them when they pass by
or when the ravens knock
at his window

neill follows trey’s lead

i share pieces of my crust
from spencer’s handmade seed bread
when they find me on my breaks,
or when i walk through the Zen center,
whistling for them

the ravens have mated for life,
embracing each other’s beaks

kika walks past the dining hall,
flapping her wings

Recommending:

Not Always So: Practicing the True Spirit of Zen by Shunryu Suzuki

So much of reading this book was “Wait, what?” then “Oh, yes,” then “Wait, what?” again. A compilation of lectures from the founder of the San Francisco Zen Center, Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, Not Always So has some practical meditation instructions in the Soto Zen tradition, and Buddhist concepts and teachings that I had to chew very slowly on, that didn’t always make sense to me. And then he’ll say something so simple, so profound, so perfect and deeply resonant. Mostly it seems I need to keep sitting and finding out for myself.

Out this week from Hello America Stereo Cassette — my poem, Caravan, is included in the new “I.C.E. Out, Love In” audio literary mixtape of stories, poems, and essays on the topic of I.C.E. Resistance. All of the proceeds will be donated to the Immigrant Defense Project. Go listen, donate, and support this work here.

Listen: "I.C.E. Out, Love In" Mixtape

Recommending:

Sanctuary: A Meditation on Home, Homelessness, and Belonging by Zenju Earthlyn Manuel

Zenju Earthlyn Manuel is an ordained Zen priest in the Shunryu Suzuki Roshi lineage of Soto Zen, and a poet and author who writes from her perspective as a Black lesbian within a Buddhist tradition. Off and on since November, I’ve had the high honor and privilege of being a resident volunteer and practitioner at the temple where she’s been a teacher-in-residence. I was inspired to read her work after talking briefly with her over dinner, and hearing her give a Dharma talk where she so compassionately shared about living with chronic pain.

In Sanctuary: A Meditation on Home, Homelessness, and Belonging, Zenju writes about ancestral exploration following violent, generational severance from homelands, and some of the formative experiences that led to her ordination. While grounded in the Buddhist views of impermanence and finding Home wherever we are, she radically addresses the need for spiritual communities to acknowledge the loss of home that oppressed people feel from displacement, foreclosure, colonization, genocide, deportation, and other forms of collective and personal disasters. Physical safety and spiritual refuge are inalienable rights, essential to us all.

Each night, after evening Zazen, we chant the Three Refuges, taking spiritual shelter in the characteristics of the Buddha, the wisdom of the Dharma, and the communal brotherhood/sisterhood of a Sangha. In a time where masses of people are being separated from their families, criminalized for being Brown, and being violently stripped from their homes, may we all more deeply examine how we can be a refuge for each other, how we can be more of a physical and spiritual shelter, how we can open our hearts to creating true sanctuaries; the homes, cities, and nations we all deserve.

Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin

Masterful, exquisite, and divinely-inspired, James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain is a gift for us all, and for all times. A book to be born again to.

I recently compiled and organized a complete list of my book recommendations on my website, only including books I’ve read in full so far. Looking forward to adding a whole lot more this year and in the years to come. You can read my recommendations here.

Terra's Book Recs

How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell

When I first (superficially) encountered this book, I scoffed. A book about doing nothing when so much actually needs to be changed and done? Hard pass. No thanks.

Apropos to the author’s most central suggestion, I had to look more closely. “Doing nothing” is not really what this book is about at all. Instead, Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy demands a withdrawal of our attention from profit-driven algorithms into the bioregions we inhabit, and she brilliantly makes the case for why our lives depend on it. This book is far from an apolitical self-help guide—ironically, it is a dutiful call-to-action.

Born, raised, and based in the Bay Area, Jenny Odell writes of resistance-in-place in which, while we may need to retreat at times, we must return with sharpened attention and care for our neighborhoods, communities, and local ecosystems. “For [Odell], doing nothing means disengaging from one framework (the attention economy) not only to give [herself] time to think, but to do something else in another framework.”

Odell references many historical examples of the discipline, experimentation, and vitality of this transformation of attention and individual/collective refusal. She does not simplistically advocate for an exodus from technology or social media, but a discipline and redirection of our attention in a way where we are not so easily manipulated. “To pay attention to one thing is to resist paying attention to other things; it means constantly denying and thwarting provocations outside the sphere of one’s attention.”

The “not doing anything” that is being advocated for is a place of stillness, observation, conversation, and cooperation; a self/world-restoration that is essential to ethical world-building. Such as today, when many thousands of people across the U.S. are planning to walk out of their jobs and classrooms against I.C.E.’s violent tactics. Read this book then put it down and look around you. Then keep looking.

The Snakes Came Back by Lora Mathis

Lora Mathis’ poems are Mary Oliver but cheekier. Her latest book, The Snakes Came Back (Metatron Press, 2023) is a collection full of friendship, wisdom, landscape, and self-nurturance. A trusted companion for the roads ahead.

Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement by Angela Y. Davis

Freedom is a Constant Struggle highlights the necessity of a working class internationalist lens in movement work, in the need to treat domestic freedom struggles and struggles abroad as inextricably intertwined. Written during the Obama-era and in the aftermath of the Ferguson uprising, Angela Davis' essays, speeches, and interviews at the time are still relevant as ever. The movement for Black Liberation has seen new iterations, and the movement for Palestinian sovereignty has only grown, while repressive forces and U.S. financial and military support for Israeli apartheid have multiplied. While some of the points and speeches in this book were repetitive, and more broad and sweeping than in-depth, Angela Davis' perspective as a life-long freedom fighter is essential to understand for those who are invested in the progressive, anti-racist, anti-war movements of past and present.

What a miracle! Last week, I bought an Amtrak Coastal Starlight ticket to Seattle to visit my long-time friend and my biological grandmother, Janet, who I’ve only met in person on two previous occasions. My mom was adopted as a one-month old infant. It was a closed adoption, and the only information we had about Janet was her first and last name, that she got pregnant in Hawai’i, and gave birth in San Francisco, impossible to find on that alone. I had tried several ways of looking her up online with no luck. Then, in 2020, I matched with Janet’s sister on 23andme as a close relative. She messaged me: “I believe my sister Janet is your mom’s biological mother.”

This Wednesday, as I was packing for the train, Janet and I were texting about meeting up in Seattle next week. She told me she was on her way home from visiting her sister in Long Beach, that her train was delayed, and that she’d be transferred to a train in Martinez in the late evening. We realized we’d be on the same train.

I boarded my train in Emeryville and settled into my coach seat, and jumped off in Martinez to look for Janet. I found her quickly as she inched her way towards the line with her cane. A friendly older man was helping her with her bags, which he’d been doing all day. I looked around and asked where we needed to go. The attendants let me bring her bags into her sleeper car, and we made plans to meet up for breakfast in the morning. Settling back into my seat, looking up at the moon and the dark sky, I felt grateful and whole, restlessly sleeping with loud snoring behind me.

We spent the entire train ride together the following day, lightly chatting or sitting quietly. The attendants took her bed down and told me I could hang out with Janet in the sleeper car the whole day. We shared breakfast, lunch, and dinner together in the dining car, which the attendants let me have as a complimentary meal as a part of Janet’s sleeper deal.

I couldn’t believe the one-in-a-million chance that my biological grandmother and I would end up on the same train together along the West Coast, that God would move us in the same direction and grant us the opportunity to share a little adventure together. The attendants could have been there to help her with her bags and to get her where she needed to go, but I was glad that I could step into this role for a short time, and to be blessed with the gifts of time with my grandmother, a quiet little room on a train, and meals in the process. I helped her off the train, into the station, and into a taxi. I caught a ferry across the Sound at the very last minute. The only thing it could be was a miracle.

Recommending:

Kuleana is the Hawaiian understanding of responsibility. In essence, it is the responsibility we have to steward, preserve, and pass down the land, language, and traditions of our cultural heritage. Sara Kehaulani Goo’s kuleana is to uncover the history and significance of her family’s land in Hāna, Maui, gifted to her Native Hawaiian ancestors by King Kamehameha III in the 1800’s. Her family’s kuleana, and her great-grandmother’s wishes, are also to prevent and protect their land from being sold.

From the Māhele that introduced the foreign laws of land ownership to Hawai’i in the 1800’s, resulting in mass land transfers to haoles (primarily white foreigners) and sugar plantations, to the spread of disease, to the illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, to rising tax rates that threaten Native Hawaiians’ abilities to keep their ancestral lands, what seems like a never-ending uphill battle also shows the resiliency of the Hawaiian people across generations. Kuleana (Flatiron Books, 2025) is the perfect read for those of us in the mixed Hawaiian diaspora who grew up on the mainland, longing to form deeper connections with the roots that have been forcibly removed for so many of us. And yet we remain, endure, and overcome. Far from an “exotic vacation destination,” any foreigner who wants to visit—or God forbid, move—to Hawai’i should be required to understand its rich history and struggle. Sara Kehaulani Goo’s book makes a beautiful part of that.

This February, I’m going to begin a four-month kitchen apprenticeship at a meditation center. My plans and intentions are simple—meditate more, get better at cooking, meet new people, feel grounded and stable, stick to a routine, read, walk, and journal on my breaks. Chop food boil water. Ambition of no ambition. But still a big ambition.

I have big ideas for what I’d like to be doing afterwards too (hint: I am itching to walk another Camino, this time the infamous Camino Francés). I am holding the goal loosely, open to what God wants to do with me this year, flexible to how the chips fall. But the seed of desire has been sprouting in me for some time. Many lessons have alchemized in me since I walked the Caminho Português from Lisbon, Portugal to Santiago de Compostela in the summer of 2022, and I am deeply curious to see how this changed and changing body/mind would experience this again. I’d be walking an entirely different route, with many many more people and more historical sites along the way, and more committed to waking up early and being less on screens. I was still underwater in my social media addiction on my last pilgrimage, and got covid which affected the last month of my walk, so I imagine I could have a very different experience. But I also have more chronic health conditions now that I manage with medications, so there would be an entirely new set of challenges to navigate. This is all still just an idea, nothing set in stone yet at all, but I’ve been dreaming and scheming and saving so that hopefully, these goals can be realized before my next settling down.

Recommending:

I flew through Elizabeth Gilbert’s All the Way to the River (Riverhead Books, September 2025) in just a few days. As a fellow in recovery for love addiction/romantic obsession, I felt empathy and identification with many of her thought-patterns and behaviors, and no part of her story truly felt “shocking,” even at her lowest. Her writing about her late-beloved and best friend, Rayya, is enough to make the world love her too, in all her fire and shortcomings. Part-memoir, part-memorial, this rigorously honest book captures the raw intensity and humanness of codependency and addiction in all its appeals and ugliness. Elizabeth Gilbert is an inspiration for laying her story all out on the table, for stepping into the rooms of recovery, and for demanding (without ever saying it) that we all take a hard look at ourselves in the mirror, too. Most inspiring of all is her relationship with her higher power, whose voice is shared with us in shimmering glimpses. This book belongs on the essential reading lists of anyone struggling with codependency, relationship issues, or addiction.

In the last years of my grandmother’s life, my mom took on more and more caregiving responsibilities, sacrificing much of her time, energy, finances, and social life. As my grandmother’s dementia progressed, her ability to live independently continued to shrink, and my mom ultimately sold her condo and moved in with her to help with care. When an opportunity presented itself, my mom retired early from a 35-year-long career at Pepsi, attempting to help with caregiving full-time.

Caregiving took an extreme physical and emotional toll on my mom, and I saw the strain it put on the mother-daughter relationship as the “parenting” roles switched, and that cost alone became too high. A team of caregivers needed to be hired, and my mom and my stepdad built an in-law unit in the backyard just so the rental income could supplement the high cost of caregiving. My mom started working remotely again. Caregivers were in the house at all hours of the day, with my mom still taking on a huge load of the work at night. My stepdad, or the fire department (if he was working out of town), would have to be called in just to lift my grandmother off the floor if she fell (or somehow found her way there). Patience often felt thin and emotions could run high. As my grandmother was “losing her marbles,” as she would frequently tell me in her earlier stages of dementia, my mom’s “marbles,” understandably, underwent a great shaking, too.

In Dasha Kiper’s Travelers to Unimaginable Lands: Stories of Dementia, the Caregiver, and the Human Brain, the most enlightening takeaway from this book is that it is extremely common for familial caregivers of dementia patients to respond irrationally to irrational behavior. Emotions take over reason, and dementia patient’s behaviors, words, and lack of cooperation sometimes feel personal—we respond to our overall history with the person, not only how they are presenting in the present moment. We react as if we are responding to a person who is more in control of their actions than they now are. If caregivers themselves think they are going crazy, or feel guilty for getting upset with their loved ones when they “know” their loved ones have dementia, they are not alone, and there are neurological explanations for why they are doing so. Travelers to Unimaginable Lands includes caregiver testimonies with a common thread—the utter helplessness, heartbreak, depletion, and frustration of seeing a loved one descend into dementia, and the confusion of witnessing parts of their personalities (including hurtful parts) remain apparently intact.

This book is a moving account of the dynamics between caregiver and dementia patient, at the same time as it is scientific and philosophical. My only preference is that the book could have been even more testimonial than explanatory in order to be more widely appealing to everyday caregivers—at some points it was difficult to understand who the author’s audience was. With that said, this book is worth the read for anyone who is or has been a caregiver for dementia patients—you will feel so much more understood, understanding, and less alone.

Gabor Maté’s work was introduced to me about 9 years ago. I was staying with a friend and her mom in Vancouver, Canada for a week or so, in desperate need of an escape from living with someone who was in active addiction. Or more accurately, I needed a break from who I became when I was living with someone in active addiction — not letting myself fall asleep, constantly checking on the person, and the incommunicable stress of obsessively wanting to keep someone alive. When I had physical distance from them, I knew it wasn’t in my power to help, so there was nothing I could do. Proximity burdened me with what no other human being can carry for another person.

When I shared a little bit about my situation with my friend’s mom, she told me about Gabor Maté’s work with addicts in Vancouver and pulled up one of his talks on addiction. This was the first time I had heard someone speaking about addiction with such understanding and clarity. I took in what he was saying, living somewhere in a corner within me before I returned to my personal hell.

In the years that followed — including years of my own recovery from the effects of that time and my experiences preceding it — I occasionally came across Gabor Maté’s work, whether I was displaying his books at the bookstore I worked at, or watching his illuminating talks on Israel’s genocide of Palestinians (Maté himself being a Holocaust survivor).

I’d been wanting to read his book In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts for years. I identified with the Buddhist concept of the hungry ghost, an entity tormented with a thirst that can never be satiated, no matter how much is consumed. Every time I saw the book it would give me a little nudge, but I would ultimately walk past it.

When I tabled at Litquake’s Small Press Book Fair this September, I spent a few minutes chatting with the vendors at the Berkeley-based North Atlantic Books table and there it was — In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts. I purchased it immediately knowing full well that my to-be-read stack was way too big already, and not knowing when I’d get the chance to read it, if at all. But the face-to-face conversations with the book’s publishing house led me to impulse-buy it anyway, hiding it away at the rock bottom of my book stack.

In November, while I was a resident volunteer at a Zen center for two weeks, I spent a lot of my break time reading in the library. And there it was again — In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts. After I finished reading Liberated Love, I picked it up and couldn’t put it down.

In Gabor Maté’s In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, his expertise in working with addicts, understanding of the addiction process, and vision for addressing the addiction crisis through structural changes and greater social support is unmatched. He is also an excellent storyteller, making what could have been a dry, inaccessibly clinical explanation of addiction an engaging, empathetic, varied testimony of the addictive experience.

Adverse experiences — and/or a lack of positive, emotionally attuned experiences — in childhood, adulthood, and even stress in utero reduce the availability of our natural, internal regulators and reward system — of dopamine, endorphins, serotonin, and so on — and increase the amount of the stress hormone, cortisol. Thus, we are put at greater risk of substance addictions and behavioral addictions to make up for what is internally lacking; an attempt to self-medicate and restore balance above all costs. Often it is not so much a “high” that is being sought for as much as it is a desperation for normalcy, for life-affirming sensations and the relief from pain. From the extreme end of the spectrum — abuse, neglect, sexual assault, poverty, violence (including colonial violence), war, dislocation, sudden loss — to emotionally distant or stressed out caregivers or a sense of isolation contribute to the conditions that increase the likelihood of addiction.

The negative effects of addiction compound on itself — the diminished availability of these internal chemicals also becomes a consequence of the addiction, making the dependence and cravings for the addictive substance or behavior increase. No matter the addictive “object” — alcohol and drugs, food, social media, television, work, gambling, romance, news, shopping, exercise, porn, videogames, etc. — the internal addiction process, Gabor Maté writes, is the same. Tolerance builds, craving increases, and withdrawal initiates when the addictive object is removed. The addictive object is interchangeable — an external stimulator of the internal chemicals that are yearned for.

This helps explain the whack-a-mole of addiction even when abstaining from specific addictive objects. For instance, while I’ve abstained from alcohol, substances, and nicotine for over 8 years, my obsessive-compulsive relationship to social media, love/fantasy/validation-seeking, television, work, and food have intermittently reared their heads. In other words, there is a transference, a change in the mere expression of addiction. It was not the object I really wanted — it was the rush of dopamine from external validation, or the numbing and pain relief of endorphins (whose etymology translates roughly to “internal morphine”), that my brain craved/craves.

These behaviors are not inherently addictive or “bad” — addiction is “any repeated behavior, substance-related or not, in which a person feels compelled to persist, regardless of its negative impact on his life and the lives of others.” (Gabor Maté, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts). In essence, we approach step one — we feel out of control, we become powerless over the behavior and our lives have become unmanageable — admitted or not. The window between impulse and action becomes a micro-sliver. The brain has already decided to act before we even become aware of the impulse, making the possibility of exercising conscious control extraordinarily narrow.

From Daniel Maté in a letter to his father, Gabor Maté: “Oddly enough, the addiction really isn’t over until I can see the emptiness (in a Buddhist sense) of the behavior: not good, not evil, and certainly not exciting, just an outside ‘thing’ I’ve been using unintelligently to dull the suffering edge of life. I say ‘unintelligently’ because no addiction in the history of the world ever alleviated more suffering than it ended up causing.”

I suggest anyone who is struggling with any form of compulsive use, struggling with the effects of a loved one’s addiction, or those who have an interest in addiction read this book. You will walk away with a deeper understanding and compassion for what so many of us are in the midst of — the realm of hungry ghosts where no amount of an external object can satiate us; the void, the God-sized hole that can only be filled with a power greater than ourselves — with love, community, presence, connection, spirituality, and a social and material fabric in which the majority of our needs are met.

Recap of books read in 2025 (in the order I read them):

• You’re Not Crazy—You’re Grieving: 6 Steps for Surviving Loss by Alan D. Wolfelt

• Tragic Victory: Learning to Navigate Life in Tough Times by Diane Davis

• Zeal by Morgan Jerkins (the only fiction book I read this year, and my favorite book I read this year)

• How to Not Always be Working: A Toolkit for Creativity and Radical Self-Care by Cody Cook-Parrott

• When Angels Speak of Love by bell hooks

• Liberated Love: Release Codependent Patterns and Create the Love You Desire by Mark Groves and Kylie McBeath

• Tender Points by Amy Berkowitz

• Works & Days by Gina Myers

• Mercy by Lucille Clifton

• Body Memory by Meriwether Clarke

• The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Fighting the Big Motherfuckin’ Sad by Adam Gnade

• Simple Steps to a Life Less Shitty by Adam Gnade

• Facing Love Addiction: Giving Yourself the Power to Change the Way You Love by Pia Mellody

• In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction by Gabor Maté

Hi all, I am thrilled to share that Issue Six of the Recenter Press Poetry Journal is now out and alive in the world. I am incredibly proud of this issue and so grateful to each of the contributors, and all who submitted. The practice of curation being one of my favorite and most challenging dances, the art of saying yes to what jumps out at me and still appreciating and admiring much of what is not “selected.”

I spent the last two weeks reading hundreds of poem submissions, and the process of narrowing becoming a practice of weaving together what feels most pertinent and relevant in this particular moment, both personally and politically. In this issue, you will find writers and makers based in the Bay Area and beyond, with sharp yet tender works on grief, gratitude, interpersonal relationships, culture and class, and our interconnections with the natural world.

I hope you enjoy the issue and that you spread the word with your communities — this is my favorite issue to date, and you can read the full issue here.

READ: ISSUE SIX

New interview on Rob McLennan’s blog:

I’m happy to share that I was recently interviewed by the prolific book reviewer and literary hype-man Rob McLennan. I shared about what brought me to bookmaking, my creative process, influences, hopes for the future and more. You can read the full interview here. 🌟 Grateful for the support always.

READ: INTERVIEW WITH TERRA OLIVEIRA

I spent two weeks in November as a guest student in residence at Green Gulch Farm and Zen Center in Muir Beach, CA. My earliest introduction to any kind of meditation community, my Papa and his Chilean friend Sal first brought me to Green Gulch when I was 19, where we attended their dharma talk, enjoyed tea and a fresh lunch from the garden, and walked through the farm and hiked around the hills. Intermittently throughout the years, I’ve returned to Green Gulch for day trips and their public Sunday program, often when I’ve needed a respite or to show a visiting friend.

This was my first residency at Green Gulch, and the focus of my stay was on work-practice and service. We woke up at 4:30am each morning, with meditation (“Zazen”) at 5am, walking meditation (“Kinhin”) at 5:40am, Zazen again at 5:50am, and then a morning service of Buddhist chanting at 6:30am.

At 7am, we did temple cleaning (“Soji”) — mostly I’d clean the bathrooms — then silent breakfast at 7:20am. During the breaks after breakfast, I went about my morning rituals, reading from two 12 step daily readers, and writing a list of things I’m grateful for, things I’m powerless over, and something bothering me that I sent to my mentor each day.

Work periods for guest students were varied: I worked in the kitchen, in the dining hall, on the farm, and around the property for about 4-5 hours five days a week, split into morning and afternoon work periods. For the first 5 days I was there, an intensive meditation retreat (“Sesshin”) was in session, so the whole atmosphere outside of the kitchen was mostly silent, with dharma talks to break up the work sessions every day. After the Sesshin ended, the community returned to about 40 practice period residents, long-term residents, work practice apprentices, and guest students, and livelier conversations returned to the lunches and dinners.

On my longer breaks, I would walk through the farm — this farm in particular one of my favorite places in the world — and to Muir Beach on several days. Underneath the meditation hall (“Zendo”) was a quaint little library, where I spent a lot of time doing 12 step work and reading (I finished reading Pia Mellody’s Facing Love Addiction and started reading Gabor Maté’s In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts). After dinner, we had evening Zazen at 7:40pm, Kinhin at 8:15pm, Zazen at 8:25pm, and closing with prostrations and taking refuge in the “three treasures” of Buddhism — Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Then off to sleep.

While I’ve done a number of residencies and intensives at meditation centers around the country (mostly Vipassana centers in the tradition of S.N. Goenka), I loved being a part of this multigenerational, multicultural Zen community. Talking to other practitioners during meals was the highlight of my stay, belly full of delicious vegetarian food and heart full of good conversation. So many of my physical, spiritual, mental, social needs felt deeply met.

I was definitely in physical pain for a lot of my stay, and had been apprehensive about going not knowing if I’d be able to tolerate the pain I’d been in lately. I told myself, I would just go a day at a time and see how it goes. I surprised myself with my mobility and energetic work throughout the day, the noise of pain and anxiety coming and going in different intensities. The Zazen practice was difficult for me — I am accustomed to closed-eye meditation with very specific focal points on the breath beneath the nostrils or on sensations throughout the body. The more relaxed practice of Zazen (in my very beginner’s understanding) is open-eyed, low-gaze, posture-focused, and the instructions I received were a bit confusing to me. So I hyper-focused on pain during sitting meditation frequently, and struggled to bring my attention to my breath or the present moment outside of a few moments of clarity. Or I was just straight sleepy. Alas, that is just what was happening and was for me to accept what was happening.

Coming back home, I look forward to returning to Green Gulch again soon, and am thankful and hopeful I’m starting a new treatment for pain and anxiety to help me manage better. Like anything, meditation is one of many, many tools in the toolbox of recovery and spiritual well-being, and I’m so glad that it continues to weave its way back into my life.

“Aspects of Work as Meditation:
- Maintaining Silence
- Mindfulness/Concentration/Focus
- Wholeheartedness/Oneness with Activity
- Leaving No Trace (in dual sense: no trace of “self”; no trace of task in work area after completed)
- No Gaining Idea (sincere & wholehearted effort with appreciation of goal but no fixation on goal)
- Same Intention and Practice as Zazen
- A Field for Harmonizing with Other People & Physical Surroundings
- Cultivation of Careful Attention to Detail
- Reveals Habits of Mind for Study of Self
- Cultivation of Physical Posture (spine, belly center, energy, & ease)”

Upcoming Events:

On Saturday, December 13th from 12-5pm, I’ll be tabling all of the Recenter Press books at the East Bay Alternative Book and Zine Fest in Berkeley! EBABZ first introduced me to DIY publishing in 2014, and I last tabled there in 2016 pre-Recenter Press, so I can’t wait to be back and share all the exciting work I’ve been putting out there.

Recommending:

I read Adam Gnade’s Do-It-Yourself Guide to Fighting the Big Motherfuckin’ Sad last month, and its sequel Simple Steps to a Life Less Shitty a week later. I needed to keep it coming, to “keep believing in your path and in a future where your life will be better than it is now.” This series of no-fluff, no-nonsense life advice is the most encouraging thing you can read to round out the year, and start another one better and differently.

My poetry book, Itinerant Songs, launched just four months ago, and this week I wrapped up my initial Bay Area book tour celebrating its release. I’m extremely grateful to all of the incredible independent bookstores, public libraries, and community spaces that hosted and booked my readings: Rebound Bookstore in San Rafael, The Long Haul Infoshop in Berkeley, Sausalito Books by the Bay, Book Passage in Corte Madera, Benicia Public Library, San Francisco Public Library’s North Beach Branch, Wayfinder Bookshop and the Fairfax Women’s Club, Bookshop Benicia, Pegasus Books in downtown Berkeley, The Exchange in Vallejo, the Mill Valley Public Library, plus tabling at Litquake’s Small Press Book Fair and San Diego Zine Fest. Building new literary partnerships, meeting authors and community makers, and bringing friends, family, and community in to these thriving spaces has been so meaningful and worth every big effort.

Thank you to every author that shared the mic with me and your poems during these readings: Rebecca Foust, Lora Mathis, Ashia Ajani, Ocean Escalanti, Francesca Bell, Christina Hutchins, Wendy M. Thompson, Steve Dickison, Brian Ang, Michelle Latvala, Cathryn Shea, Chelsea Wills, Alison Hart, paulA neves, Richelle Slota, Valdez Hill, Clive Matson, and Garrett Murphy. And special thanks to Vallejo Co-Poets Laureate Kathleen Herrmann and Jacalyn Eyvonne, Benicia Poet Laureate Katrina Monroe, Sharon Coleman and MK Chavez, the Marin Poetry Center, and all of the others that reached out to book some of these readings. It has been such a pleasure to curate many of these readings and/or be introduced to each and every one of your work. I’m so excited about these growing poetic connections, and to continue to be in literary community with the thriving Bay Area (and beyond) poetry scene.

Huge thank you also to all of you that attended one (or more!) of these readings on this localized tour, bought a copy of Itinerant Songs, and signed up for this newsletter. I can’t stress enough how much your presence, listening ear, and support has meant to me. Truly one of the most nerve-wracking things about booking readings is wondering if anyone will show up — fears of disappointing venues and other readers and all that. No matter how many people attended, I felt so engaged and grateful to be sharing such presence with you all. There were so many thoughtful questions and surprising conversations that came with each event, and I left every event buzzing with excitement and aliveness (even when my body was/is Going Through It).

Going about the book launch in this boots-on-the-ground way has been the best way I could have celebrated Itinerant Songs’ launch, and to fully honor the enormous multi-year effort it took to write and publish this book. There’s roughly 180 copies of Itinerant Songs out in readers’ hands now, which is honestly a great start for an independently published, small press poetry book that came out less than four months ago. You can continue to support the book and my work by getting a copy for yourself or a friend on the Recenter Press online shop (especially in time for the holidays), by requesting the book at your local bookstore or library, by reviewing the book or sharing about it in person or any online platform, and by continuing to reach out if you’re booking a reading (I’d love to keep doing them). You can also rate or review the book on Goodreads, which is also very appreciated.

Thank you all again for being an essential part of uplifting my book and other independent writers! I’ll keep seeing you out there.

Recommending:

Adam Gnade’s Do-It-Yourself Guide to Fighting the Big Motherfuckin’ Sad is self-help but real. A pep talk from a tried and true friend. An assertion of the will to live, and live with all we’ve got. Read this and then get it for a friend and then “push forward. Push until it breaks open and shows the golden yolk. Push until you’re walking in the clear, the wind in your face, a clean path before you…”

I loved Meriwether Clarke’s latest poetry book, Body Memory, out from Unsolicited Press in October 2025, and being introduced to her work at a poetry reading at UC Irvine a couple weeks ago. A feminist perspective of the body, the male gaze, and how it is internalized and fought against, these poems speak to the broadly relatable experience of growing up in American “girlhood,” and the ways our bodies become the subjects of both shaming and fixation. Meriwether’s language and imagery are careful, precise, praiseworthy, and commanding. An excellent new read.

Plus a searching and fearless inventory of the shows I’ve watched in the last few years. Really it’s a list of shows I’ve watched since I became single in 2021. I’m pretty sure it’s exhaustive? I tried to make it in order of favorites and then I gave up so I wouldn’t read into the order much. Some I liked better than others obviously. Outlander and This is Us are definitely the shows that completely fucking took me, where I actively miss the characters sometimes. Mo I would recommend… mo… than all the others. Taking complete TV detoxes for set periods of time has done me good occasionally, right now I’m loving TV in the evenings to help distract my Pain Body as long as I’m doing all of the other things I love as first priority. I’m also looking forward to doing a two-week guest-student stay at a Zen center next week where I can be of service and take a real break from TV and social media. My relationship to media is always changing, and sometimes I want more than anything to be more puritanical in what I consume. Onwards we go…

Call for submissions:

Recenter Press Poetry Journal: Issue Six poetry and visual art submissions are still open! Submissions close on November 30th, and submission guidelines can be found here.

Upcoming events:

I have three poetry readings coming up these next couple weeks! This is the final stretch of readings I have booked this year celebrating my new poetry book, Itinerant Songs— join me and these thoughtfully curated poets I’ll be reading alongside :)

This Wednesday, October 29th from 7-9pm at Pegasus Books’ Downtown (2349 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley), I’ll be reading poems for the October Harvest Moon reading at the long-held Lyrics & Dirges reading series. Come celebrate the rich harvest of words with East Bay and East Coast poets and fictions writers. Enjoy a reading with Alison Hart, paulA neves, Richelle Slota, Wendy M. Thompson, and I. As always, Pegasus provides complimentary refreshments and the reading is free. Co-hosted by Sharon Coleman and MK Chavez. The poster was designed by kali inspired by my poem, Lahaina (The Cruel Sun).

On Sunday, November 2nd at 2pm, Vallejo Co-Poets Laureate Kathleen Herrmann and Jacalyn Eyvonne will be hosting Valdez Hill and I for a poetry reading at The Exchange, Vallejo (617 Marin Street). I’m so grateful to Vallejo’s Co-Poets Laureate for how they’ve shown up and supported my new book and the Solano County poetry community!

Valdez Hill is a classically trained pianist and graphic designer. He just celebrated 58 years of playing the piano. In his last performance, he mixed music and poetry inspired by different composer’s works. Valdez has been a member of the Board of Directors for the Young People’s Symphony Orchestra (YPSO) in Berkeley, CA, for 18 years. He is the second-longest serving member of the board. Valdez has been on the board of the Oakland East Bay Gay Men’s Chorus for five years and has also served on the boards of other non-profit groups. He founded Giving Concerts and is the Artistic Director. Valdez has been writing poems for several years and will soon release a book titled Circle of Life. He has had two poems published in the Moonstone Arts Center’s Anthology Series and other online poetry publishers. He has shared his ekphrastic poems at several local art galleries and poetry events. Finally, he has written several commissioned poems for other musicals and artists. He mainly writes poems inspired by classical music for his piano performances.

On Thursday, November 6th at 6:30pm, the Marin Poetry Center is hosting a poetry reading featuring Clive Matson, Garrett Murphy, and I at the glorious Mill Valley Public Library. Registration is required at the link here, and the event is free to attend.

Clive Matson was taught by Beat Generation writers Herb Huncke, Michael McClure, Diane di Prima, John Wieners, and Alden van Buskirk in New York in the 1960s. His books include Let the Crazy Child Write! and Hello, Paradise. Paradise, Goodbye. Matson taught creative writing at UC Berkeley Extension for many years and currently offers online classes and supports students on Wordswelljournal.org. He received the Berkeley Lifetime Achievement in Poetry Award in 2012, was named the Best East Bay Writing Teacher in 2006, received a PEN Oakland Josephine Miles National Award in 2003, and the Beat Poetry Foundation named Clive “Lifetime Beat Laureate.” *Clive may be accompanied by musician Gail Alcock, Cellist.

Garrett Murphy is well-known in the Bay Area poetry scene as a political and human satirist. He published several chapbooks of poetry and prose, including Now Showing, What We Claim… What We Are, the novel Yang But Yin: The Legend of Miss Dragonheel, and recently, Scooting Along or How to Function as One of the Most Despised Persons on Earth. Murphy’s work is noted for its rhythmic structure and musical resonance. His performance-ready feel is enriched by internal rhythms and echoes of gospel and blues.

REGISTRATION REQUIRED (FREE TO ATTEND)

Recenter Press Poetry Journal: Issue Six poetry and visual art submissions are open until November 30th! Submission guidelines can be found here. Thank you to those of you who have submitted your work so far — keep it coming and spread the word! All submissions will be responded to after November 30th.

Hello all! I’m excited to share the full recording of the interview I did live on air on Vallejo, CA’s OZCAT Radio in mid-September. The brilliant and incredibly supportive Vallejo Co-Poet Laureate Kathleen Herrmann interviewed me about my new book, Itinerant Songs, and my small press, Recenter Press. We talked both personal and political: my many moves, ancestry and identity, and the impacts of imperialism on our communities and ecosystems. Support community radio and local authors and give it a listen! Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Today I’m celebrating 8 full years of sobriety from all intoxicants. Making the decision to completely give up alcohol and substances has been one of many foundational choices I’ve made on the lifetime road of recovery. There was a multi-years-long period before this sobriety date where I had already been reducing my alcohol / substance intake, with long strings of abstinence, but my first 10-day Vipassana meditation course in 2017 really solidified for me that alcohol use and walking a spiritual path could not go hand in hand for me. I could take it or leave it, sure, but I saw that most of the time, I was either harming myself or harming others when I was drinking or under the influence. Substance use exacerbated my already difficult problems, and while those problems haven’t disappeared, they have become more manageable. Abstaining from substances is a vow and commitment to myself — and really to all those I come in contact with — and its foundation has been necessary for the progress I’ve made in other areas of my life. It’s one of the five Buddhist precepts of conduct that come from the accumulative experience of monks and lay people that create the foundation for a service-oriented life. Refraining from intoxicants, killing, sexual misconduct (which I interpret as romantic / sexual relations outside of a committed relationship), stealing, and false / harmful speech are all ideals which I hope to strive towards, not for any kind of self-righteousness but for the benefit of my own and others’ well-being. When experience has proven that those indulgences have caused me and others’ suffering, then it is in my best interest to strive towards a better way. Sobriety, for me, is a structural pillar. If I don’t have that as a part of my foundation, everything I build on top of it will be weaker. I become more susceptible to inevitable storms. When my foundation is strong, only then am I ready to build my life upon it.

Recommending:

Gina Myers’ brand new poetry collection, Works & Days, from one of my favorite small presses, the Philadelphia-based Radiator Press. When I got my preordered copy in the mail I read it all in one sitting. This is absolutely what I needed to read, especially as I am dealing with some high-stress work-related things in my life currently. I love Gina’s pop culture references to critiques of toxic workplace cultures under capitalism, from Dolly Parton to The Twilight Zone to Aliens. Her workplace testimonies. Her sharpness, wit, and subtle humor. Her assertions that we all deserve better than this. This is a book that needs our attention and demands it.

To answer the final line in Works & Days, “What is it that keeps you alive” — Recovery. Taking walks. Talking to my friends. Sharing meals. My family. Swimming. Reading books from people I admire. Sharing other people’s work. Going to church. Good sermons. Praying. Meditation which I forget to do. Affection. Creating. Looking at art. Being offline. Being of service. People watching. Dancing. Nature. Drinking water. Getting really good sleep (rare). Learning something new. Seeing something new. Exploring. Meaningful work. Getting my head out of the mega spiral and back into the world.

Amy Berkowitz’ Tender Points is brilliant and precise, a scalpel of investigation and testimony of chronic pain, traumatic experience, and the bridge between them.

Amy writes: “When it comes to the mystery of my pain, I can’t resist the impulse to solve it. I have all these pieces, and I can’t stop my hands from wanting to jam them together until some sense emerges.”

I read this during my own not-quite-solved experience with pain, first chronic pelvic pain and now dispersing itself in many directions, knowing my own history of trauma and that it all must have to be connected somehow. The pain having to show up somewhere. All of the doctor’s appointments and ruling things out. The pushing and the advocacy. The back and forth. The nights with little sleep or rabbit holes of research. The fears and the desperation for answers. Just learning to “live with it” and accept the pains as a new constant, a new normal, a new voice that is always in the middle of every conversation trying to interrupt my own. The body a vessel and an ever-signaling mystery. I have my attention on you — I am looking right at you — what is it you want me to see? What is it you want me to do? I am seeing. I am doing. The answer in part: that my body is a fist that is having trouble undoing itself. It is always waiting for an enemy around the corner so it has become its own enemy. The fight-or-flight response has been active for way too long. The beating it does to the whole system. The multi-generational experience of it. “It feels like just another body part. An always-clenching in my shoulders, neck, back, legs, hands.”

Tender Points should be read by anyone living with pain or loving someone in pain. By anyone who has experienced trauma or loves someone that has. It will shine a bright light on the truths that are so often downplayed and dismissed. The solidarity of reading a work that makes the “invisible” visible, that says I believe you.

“the angels have no wings
they come to you wearing
their own clothes

they have learned to love you
and will keep coming

unless you insist on wings”

/

“you are not
your brothers keeper
you are
your brother”

— Lucille Clifton, from Mercy

I’ll be tabling all of the Recenter Press books at San Diego Zine Fest this year! On Sunday, October 19th ONLY, catch me from 12pm-6pm at WOO! Studios (2212 Main St., San Diego, CA) for a day-long celebration of indie / DIY publishing in one of my absolute favorite cities. There are so many incredible vendors this year, so if you’re in the Southern California area, you don’t wanna miss it.

On Friday, October 24th at 6pm, join us at the Fairfax Women's Club (all genders welcome 😉) in Fairfax, CA for a celebratory evening of poetry hosted by the loveliest Point Reyes Books. We'll hear from established local authors reading from their latest: Michelle Latvala's Between Latitudes, Cathryn Shea's Ghost Matinee, Chelsea Wills’ The Home of Milk, and I’ll be reading from Itinerant Songs.

Michelle Latvala is the author of Between Latitudes, published by Green Writers Press 2025. She is faculty for poet David Whyte’s Institute for Conversational Leadership, served as Executive Director of Spirit Rock Meditation Center for a decade, and founded a series of nature-based writing and meditation programs called Insight Outside. Michelle migrates thoughtfully between responsibilities in northern California and eastern Alaska, where she built a cabin at the same latitude her Finnish ancestors inhabited for centuries in the shared circumpolar boreal forest.

Cathryn Shea's second full-length poetry collection is Ghost Matinee (April 2025). Her first is Genealogy Lesson for the Laity (both with Unsolicited Press of Portland, Oregon). A Best of the Net nominee, Cathryn's poetry has been widely anthologized and has appeared in Rust + Moth, Poet Lore, Quiddity, Gargoyle, and extensively elsewhere. Cathryn is a fourth-generation northern Californian living with her family in Fairfax, CA.

Chelsea Wills is a writer, interdisciplinary artist, and clinical herbalist based in Northern California. Her published works include Home of Milk (Bottlecap Press, 2024), Love Letters from the Moon (2017), and Teach Me How To (Works Progress Agency, 2020). With a Master’s degree from UC Berkeley, she has shown work and taught locally and internationally. Her writing weaves the eroticism of parenting, place-based knowledge, and community healing, centering memory, imagination, and reverent curiosity at the intersection of what it is be a person becoming.

On Sunday, October 26th at 6pm, join me for a poetry reading and book signing of Itinerant Songs at the wonderful Bookshop Benicia in downtown Benicia. I’m looking forward to another hometown reading, and so thankful for how supportive the Solano County poetry community has been for my work. See you there!

Full interview with Benicia Magazine:

The following is the complete interview between Editor-in-Chief of Benicia Magazine, Cooper Mickelson, and me which took place in August for this article in the Fall 2025 issue of Benicia Magazine.

Cooper Mickelson: As someone who has grown up in Benicia, how has this place shaped your voice as a writer and the themes you explore?

Terra Oliveira: My relationship to Benicia, and writing about where I’m from, has shifted a lot over the last few years. In one of my first poetry books, An Old Blue Light, I wrote from a place of restlessness and wanting to leave home. Some lines from poems in An Old Blue Light: “i am leaving California. / i do not wish to be so small” and “i’ve got to keep moving / so the flies do not get me” come to mind. Growing up, I remember feeling out of place, limited, and trapped, and the confluence of those feelings with some hardships and a strong traveling itch led me to leave, and to write about that leaving.

On the other hand, my new poetry book, Itinerant Songs, is split into three parts: “On Work,” “On Country,” and “On Going Home.” The book begins in settings throughout Philadelphia, where I lived and worked from 2017-2023. “On Going Home” is influenced by years of transience and ultimately wanting to live closer to my family, to explore writing about my relationships to them through dreams, loss, and grief.

My grandmother, Teruko Azevedo, lived in Benicia for over 50 years. She suffered from dementia during the last years of her life, and my desire to be closer to her both influenced my decision to move back to the Bay Area and inspired a number of poems in the section “On Going Home.” The need to hold on to precious, limited time with family comes through a lot in the later poems of Itinerant Songs and in my pull to live in or near Benicia. Home is wherever my family is, and my family has lived in Benicia for three generations. “On Going Home” also means coming home to myself and to God, too, and is meant to convey that home is not only a physical space, but a spiritual dwelling.

Cooper: How does being from a small waterfront town inform the way you approach broader, more global themes in your work?

Terra: Water, and the ways it's been polluted and owned instead of protected and held in common, is a recurring theme in Itinerant Songs. Sitting near water has been an important ritual for me since I was a small child, when my mom would take my sister and I to sit at the waterfront near Semple Court and West G Street in Benicia. The ritual continued into high school, sitting on the benches on West K Street during off-campus lunch breaks, looking out at the water and getting stoned with my then-high school boyfriend. Then in college, when I went to San Francisco State University, I lived near Ocean Beach and would walk for hours along the shore with friends or in quiet contemplation. Then there is my heritage: coming from waterfront lineages in Hawai’i, the Azores, from peoples who rely on water quality (which we all do) and food from the sea. Observing the water, writing about its sanctity, and talking about the ways it's been disrupted by capital from Hawai’i to the Delaware River is a central theme in Itinerant Songs.

Cooper: Your lineage spans the Hawaiian Islands, the Azores, Southern China, Guadalajara, and Europe; how does that rich cultural heritage shape your storytelling?

Terra: Learning about my lineages has been central to my writing practice and exploration of my own personhood. My mom was adopted when she was an infant, and I did not know any of my dad’s father’s extended family, so I was raised knowing very little about our cultural heritage(s) and family bloodlines. I also had a hard time with strangers’ incessant questions about my ethnic background growing up, and not knowing how to answer them.

In 2020, I started thoroughly tracing our ancestry, connecting with my mom’s biological family, and learning more about the regions our lineages were from. One of the poems in Itinerant Songs, “Nā Kahawai (The Rivers) of My Great Grandmother, Maude,” traces my family’s ancestry as if they were the merging of many rivers, and the grief of estrangement and disconnection from homeland. I wrote several poems about Hawai’i as a means to reconnect with that heritage and to reclaim it. I also wrote a handful of poems in Itinerant Songs while I walked the Caminho Português, the Portuguese Way of St. James, which I walked with the goal of learning more about my Portuguese ancestry.

As integral as connecting with ancestry and lineage has been to my creative practice and understanding of my background, I relate more to the phrase that goes something like “the blood of battle is thicker than the water of the womb.” Meaning, the bonds with my grandmother, “Bachan,” who raised my mom, or with my stepdad, who lost his life in a power plant accident last year, are as much a part of my life-heritage and life-story as any bloodline could possibly be.

Cooper: How do you navigate holding so many intersecting histories and identities in your work?

Terra: I think because my identities have been a process of exploration and discovery more than a single inheritance or a fixed upbringing, my writing ends up being an extension of that exploration, too. My identities at times have felt disjointed and fragmented, making it difficult to understand their intersections. Then, they do begin to make more sense and feel more cohesive when studying migrations and histories, such as the Chinese and Portuguese’ labor migrations to Hawai’i for instance. My writing might feel disjointed to some readers as I don’t write about any one specific place—reading Itinerant Songs, you will find Philadelphia, the Bay Area, Hawai’i, China, and Portugal, and a good deal of movement. That sense of holding so many places at once both as home and as identity is something I’ve needed to navigate and contend with my whole life, there is no one single homeland, so that is something my readers will need to hold too as I write from place to place.

Cooper: You’ve described recovery as one of your core practices. How has that journey influenced the stories you tell and the way you tell them?

Terra: I’ve been sober since my mid-twenties, and involved in a number of twelve step programs since my late-twenties. While I did write poems and personal essays prior to starting my recovery journey, the twelve step framework has drastically changed the way I write. I used to write a lot more diaristically, which is now more reserved for my private journal and for processing with my recovery communities and in my personal relationships. I don’t think I “expose” myself through my public writing as much as I once did, and I process trauma in much different ways. People who read my writing are getting a more processed, thought-through, and polished version of my experiences and my ideas, which is definitely healthier for me personally. Also, the twelve step framework, and other spiritual practices I’ve been involved in, greatly shape the perspective from which I write. I write about faith and the twelve step concept of “turning it over” quite a bit in my poems, and my writing has become more grounded and less fantasy-oriented.

Cooper: What role has writing played in your healing process?

Terra: Writing helps reveal what is dormant or hidden within us. When I write, my thoughts and feelings become more conscious and obvious to me. I may write the same thing over and over again to myself — that I am uncertain about a relationship or a job, that I want to reach a specific goal or achievement in my life — in a way we can’t deny to ourselves. Writing in any form brings me closer to myself.

Writing poetry has also been healing for me because the practice communicates to me that my interests and passions are worth pursuing, that my craft matters regardless of how much time it takes and how little material gain it brings me. I think my poetry also reminds me of my spiritual values, which can be easy to lose touch with in moments of doubt, anxiety, and fear. My poems are often more spiritually grounded than the states I might find myself in, mostly because of the place within me that my poetry is coming from. Sometimes I’ll read my poems and think, “Wow, thanks, I forgot and really needed that.”

Cooper: What would you say to someone who wants to use creativity as part of their recovery journey?

Terra: Recovery has given me the time and the tools to focus on my creative ambitions. I’m less distracted by self-destructive pursuits and more trusting of the process that I’m exactly where I need to be. Recovery also helps me handle rejections (from literary opportunities, people, etc) with more grace, helping me to remember that rejection is protection from the things that aren’t meant for me.

Creativity is such a huge part of my recovery, and it doesn’t only need to be about mastering a craft or professionalism either. It can be about play, self-expression, and discovery that doesn’t always need to be witnessed, about letting ourselves express and bring shape to what is alive within us in any form. For example, creativity through dance has been a very healing part of my recovery journey, both through improvised dance as a form of somatic therapy and also choreographed Polynesian dance. Those practices aren’t something I share publicly very often, and they help me take myself less seriously and find more play and meaning in my day-to-day. Creativity is a spirit we can bring to almost any act.

Cooper: Your work connects to pilgrimage, retreat, and peoples’ movements globally. How do those practices and experiences feed your creative life?

Terra: Some of my best writing and shifts in life-direction have come during or immediately following retreats. My poem, On the Way of St. James, is one of my favorite poems in Itinerant Songs, and it was written during a three-day monastic retreat while I was walking the Caminho Português. Retreating from a day job and from technology especially help ground me more in my center and in my higher power, and it is from this place that my best writing often comes from. On retreat, the writing feels more like a channeling experience than something coming only from “me.”

Regarding peoples’ movements, I am lucky to have received a good deal of mentorship about the histories of labor movements, anti-war movements, and anti-imperialist movements through political organizations I have been a part of. My writing is rooted in the belief that housing, water, food, healthcare, and freedom from war and oppression are fundamental human rights that must be ever-strived towards.

Cooper: How do you hope your work contributes to building or sustaining community, here in Benicia, and beyond?

Terra: While writing is often a solitary act, poetry cannot live in isolation — we depend on each other to share and uplift each other’s work. My hope is to continue participating in and organizing poetry readings around the Bay Area, to connect with other writers and promote each other’s work, and to continue publishing poetry and art through Recenter Press with an emphasis on local writers.

Cooper: Can you share a moment when your writing intersected with activism or collective action in a meaningful way?

Terra: A number of my poems in Itinerant Songs were written when I was a community organizer with the Philadelphia Liberation Center — such as my poem, Philly Spring Cleanup, which was written about a neighborhood trash cleanup and our collaboration with neighborhood block captains. Tenants’ and workers’ rights are also a common theme, all inspired by my experience as a community organizer and involvement in anti-war struggles, workplace organizing, and political education programs.

Cooper: Recenter Press was founded in 2017 and has now come home to the Bay Area. What inspired you to start this publishing house?

Terra: I’ve been inspired by the DIY / independent publishing scene since the first time I attended the East Bay Alternative Book & Zine Fest (EBABZ) in 2014. Seeing how exciting and possible it was to self-publish and get our work out there, I told myself I wanted to publish enough books to fill up a table someday. I then learned how to self-publish poetry and photography books, including a feminist photo book I funded on Kickstarter in 2015. In 2016, I first tabled my own poetry and art books at EBABZ and Olympia Zine Fest. When I had a poetry book selected for publication with Where Are You Press (based in Portland, Oregon), I realized I had accumulated enough knowledge and skills about self-publishing to begin publishing others’ work. I also wanted to create a publishing house that paid authors fairly, uplifted marginalized voices, and emphasized the themes I was interested in.

As soon as I moved to Philadelphia, I created a website and social media accounts and launched Recenter Press. The hand-carved block print logo I made at the time is the logo I still use to this day. Initially, I began with publishing writers’ personal essays and author interviews, then put out a call for manuscript submissions. Since then, I’ve published five poetry books by authors from around the U.S. in addition to my own books, five issues of the Recenter Press Poetry Journal, and occasionally vended books across the country from punk rock flea markets to the AWP Community Bookfair. I’m tabling Recenter Press books at the San Diego Zine Fest on October 19th this year, and I really can’t wait for it.

Cooper: Recenter Press publishes work on themes like workers’ rights, racial justice, recovery, and our interdependence with the natural world. How do you choose the voices and stories you amplify?

Terra: I do a mix of outreach to authors and artists whose work I follow, and put out open calls for submissions. When curating my selections for publication, first and foremost I prioritize the strength of the work and the political perspective (if any) it is written from. I also pay close attention to ensuring I’m publishing a diversity of voices, and prioritizing people of color, LGBTQ people, and women. The following or notoriety someone does or doesn’t have is not a factor at all — I am happy to publish both established and emerging voices as long as there is merit, craft, and truth to the work. For each issue of the Recenter Press Poetry Journal, I select twenty poets and one artist to publish, so there have been many times where I’ve said no to truly excellent work that just didn’t fit a particular issue. My selection process is often personal and subjective.

Cooper: What are your hopes for Recenter Press now that it’s rooted back in the Bay Area?

Terra: I’d love to publish annual issues of the Recenter Press Poetry Journal, to continue to organize poetry readings throughout the Bay Area, and to keep tabling at book fairs around the West Coast. As of now, I can’t foresee when or if I will open manuscript submissions again, but I’m looking forward to continuing to use the Recenter Press platform to uplift progressive voices in whatever ways I can.

Cooper: Itinerant Songs has been described as “a yearning for home.” What does home mean to you in the context of this collection?

Terra: The “yearning for home” described in Itinerant Songs is the search and the struggle for housing security and affordability, for a living wage rewarded for meaningful work that can provide us with a dignified, resourced life. Especially in Itinerant Songs’ first section, “On Work,” my poems explore the difficulty in earning an adequate wage that can keep up with the cost of living, and the amount of times I’ve needed to move or change jobs in order to support myself. The “On Country” section of Itinerant Songs is the search for home as a part of a community and cultural identity, challenging the ways U.S. imperialism has stripped communities apart and torn people away from their lands. The third section, “On Going Home,” explores finding home along the spiritual path, looking at our family dynamics, and finding a piece of home within ourselves.

Cooper: The book speaks to both the political and the spiritual. How do you balance those two dimensions in your poetry and your life?

Terra: My spiritual beliefs and my political convictions go hand-in-hand, I wouldn’t be able to separate them. My spirituality informs my politics and my politics inform my spirituality. I look to leaders like Howard Thurman, Martin Luther King Jr., Archbishop Óscar Romero, Jesus, Mahatma Gandhi who united their spirituality with their politics, who treated union with God and service of people equally. I hope that in my writing and in my life-practice, politics and spirituality compliment rather than compete with each other.

Cooper: If there’s one feeling or understanding you hope readers carry with them after finishing Itinerant Songs, what would it be?

Terra: Hope for their own and our collective futures.

Cooper: What does your creative process look like? Do you approach writing as ritual, discipline, or something in between?

Terra: I have really struggled to maintain any kind of writing ritual or writing discipline. Sometimes I will go months without writing, hence Itinerant Songs taking me nearly eight years to write. I’ll usually write when I’m already thinking in poems, which comes from being more observant of my thoughts and my surroundings, and getting myself into the habit of writing down whatever’s coming up. I’m pretty out of the habit right now. Having just published a book that I’ve been working on for this long, I’m less inclined to want to create something new, but rather I’m excited to focus my energy on nurturing and sharing this completed work. When I’m feeling rusty though, signing up for a writing workshop or writing retreat helps with the discipline and gives me new prompts to swirl around. For local support, Winslow House Project in Vallejo’s day-long writing days every few months have helped me immensely.

Cooper: How do you know when a piece, especially one that draws on such personal and complex themes, is truly finished?

Terra: The work just feels set. We’re ready to walk away from the cocoon between ourselves and the work alone and have it live in the world on its own. We’ve looked at it over and over again from many eyes and angles without finding anything we feel off or incomplete about. Mostly, the work stops bugging us. And if a little thing keeps bugging us and we can’t figure out why, sometimes we just let it be done anyway. We work it and work it and work it but try to let go of perfection.

Cooper: Is there a project, writing or otherwise, that you are excited to explore next?

Terra: My writing goals right now are to participate in as many poetry readings as I can and to share Itinerant Songs in person. I have a number of readings upcoming throughout the Bay Area, including a reading at the Benicia Public Library on September 16th at 6:15pm. You can find more upcoming events on my website. In the next year, I’m hoping to participate in more writing residencies, service programs at meditation centers, and walking pilgrimages and to see what comes of them. I’m also hoping to shoot my shot at applying to MFA programs in creative writing again — again because I was rejected from the programs I applied to during application cycles a few years ago. I’m just going to keep trying and keep creating, again and again.

Read: Benicia Magazine Article

Order: Itinerant Songs

On Saturday, September 27th at 3pm, I’ll have the honor of reading poems from Itinerant Songs at the San Francisco Public Library’s North Beach Branch. Support one of the Bay Area’s most vibrant libraries and this exciting local lineup during the North Beach Library’s open house!

Reading Schedule:

• 3:00–3:45pm Community Readings: Ann Pedone, Brian Ang, Steve Dickison, Terra Oliveira

• 4:00–4:30pm 2025–26 Residents: Akiko Neumann, Ash Huang, Keli Dailey, Kevin Dublin, Maya Kini

• 4:35–5:00pm Lisa Brown & Daniel Handler Alumni: E Okobi, Marina Hope Wilson, Ploi Pirapokin, Sara Marinelli, Sarah Matsui

• 5:05–5:30pm Lisa Brown & Daniel Handler Alumni: Douglas Henderson, Lindsey Smith, Preeti Vangani

On Sunday, September 28th from 11am-4pm, I’ll be vending all of the Recenter Press Books at Litquake’s Small Press Book Fair at Yerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco! Stop by the Recenter Press table, check out our books, and learn more about open submissions for Issue Six of the Recenter Press poetry journal, open now.

Poetry and visual art submissions for Issue Six of the Recenter Press Poetry Journal have reopened! Submissions will be open from September 15th through November 30th, 2025. Learn more about submission guidelines at recenterpress.com/submissions.

News & reviews:

I’m excited to share that an article about my book and interview with me is featured in the Fall 2025 issue of Benicia Magazine! Thank you so much to Cooper Mickelson for asking such thoughtful questions and writing such an excellent piece. What an honor and a gift to be featured in my hometown magazine.

READ: BENICIA MAGAZINE ARTICLE

To support Solano County bookshops and my book, get your copy of Itinerant Songs at Bookshop Benicia and Alibi Bookshop in Vallejo ❤️‍🔥

Read a dreamy new review of Itinerant Songs by Diana Lizette Rodriguez in their very cool project, Calle Soledad Presa. The full review can be found here.

“Terra Oliveira provides more than an understanding. She gives us freedom. And to read Itinerant Songs is a force, a patience. A deep witnessing… that brings forth an absolution.” — Diana Lizette Rodriguez, from their review of Itinerant Songs

ORDER: ITINERANT SONGS

Big thanks to writer, actor, teaching artist, and good friend Parker Sera for her new review of Itinerant Songs:

“I carried this book with me and read it in the New York City subway, in doctors’ offices in Philadelphia, while staying at my friend’s house on Camano Island outside Seattle, and on Amtrak down to Los Angeles, and, just like the title suggests, on the road was the perfect place to work through this book, which concerns itself deeply with geography, wandering, belonging, and the myriad ways we arrive home — spiritually, relationally, in our bodies, our friends, our cars, our faith, our culture, our struggles for survival and for justice. Terra’s writing is simultaneously gentle and incredibly frank, leading with an honest simplicity while refusing to mince words on the subjects of workers’ rights, capitalism, environmental degradation and land sovereignty.” — Parker Sera, from her review of Itinerant Songs

Recommending:

I started reading Liberated Love over a year ago, right after the book released. As a long-time listener and fan of the Mark Groves Podcast, I appreciated how I could hear his voice and be introduced to Kylie’s voice in this new codependency book written by two spouses. In some ways they write like they speak: straight-forward in a way that any good friend should call us out, the buddy over our shoulder saying don’t fuckin do it man (but with a lot of gentleness). The book was practical, and while it didn’t necessarily introduce many new concepts in healing from codependent dynamics, this book helped motivate me to take an at least one-year withdrawal period from any form of dating during a period I had already been single for a few years. This book definitely wasn’t the only motivating factor or tool that I implemented, but it was one of many nudges I needed to take such a sweeping, detailed, intentional pivot on my recovery journey. I put this book down for a long while during an early stage of grief and unexpected loss, as I didn’t have the mental or emotional space to even think about romantic patterns at the time. I’m glad I took the time to read it and that I finally finished it — I don’t feel like I needed to walk away from this book with any big breakthrough, but it helped remind me of my worth, it reminded me of the importance of walking away from red flags, and it reminded me that dating is not about being chosen, but making choices. While the emphasis of this book was on healing romantic patterns, they rightfully stressed that the heart of healing romantic love is to live more fully and expansively into ourselves, having romantic love being a part of a wide web amongst many support beams holding each other up.

My small but mighty zine fest haul from San Francisco Zine Fest a few weeks ago. Zines are: The Light From Above / The Shadow Underneath It, a gorgeous cyanotype and poetry zine by Ocean Escalanti, and All The Same Fears Plus New Ones, a stunning letter-pressed poetry chapbook by Danielle Freiman. Read and support these way talented super good local Bay Area makers! The “…” poem in Ocean Escalanti’s zine (pictured) was first published in Issue Five of the Recenter Press Poetry Journal.

New merch:

I did a big thing and launched merch on the Recenter Press shop! Getting my merch is one great way to support my work and keep me making, organizing, curating, and publishing. Support poetry by getting some new poetry swag ദ്ദി( • ᴗ < )♡

On Sunday, September 14th at 4pm, join me at Book Passage in Corte Madera, CA (Marin County) for a poetry reading with Oakland-based poet and educator Wendy M. Thompson. I’ll be reading from my new poetry book, Itinerant Songs, and Wendy will be reading from her new book, Black California Gold. I’m thrilled to be reading alongside Wendy, where her book “traces the past and present of California’s Bay Area, exploring themes of family, migration, girlhood, and identity against a backdrop of urban redevelopment, advanced gentrification, and the erasure of Black communities. Traveling down both familiar highways and obscure side streets, her poems map a region where race, class, and language are just some of the fault lines that divide communities and produce periodic tremors of violence and resistance.”

My family has lived in the Bay Area, through some branches, for four generations, with a fifth generation already running and playing about here. Ancestry, family, and migration are common themes in Itinerant Songs (from Hawai'i to the Bay), so I can’t wait to see how our books will be in conversation with each other. Spread the word and tell your friends! This will be a good one and I hope to see you there.

More about Wendy M. Thompson:

Wendy M. Thompson is an Oakland born-and-raised poet and historian who uses poetry and scholarly research as documentary methods and archival forms to capture a record of generation, place, time, and mood of black and immigrant life in California. Her debut poetry collection Black California Gold (Bucknell University Press, 2025) maps out life in the Bay Area in the 1980s and 1990s as the descendant of black Southern migrants. Her creative and research interests include black California and the Bay Area, race and the built environment, interracial families and mixed race identity, and nature and the natural world. She is an Associate Professor of African American Studies at San José State University.

On Tuesday, September 16th at 6:30pm, join me for my first ever official poetry reading in my hometown at the Benicia Public Library, where I’ll be reading from Itinerant Songs. My reading will be followed by an open mic, so please do bring your favorite poems to read! I’m so thankful to the Benicia Poet Laureate Katrina Monroe for coordinating this reading and hosting the event.

This will be a wonderful homecoming reading as the Benicia Public Library was the first place I ever had an art piece exhibited, and the first place I volunteered as a teenager as a part of their children’s summer reading program in 2008. I’m especially excited that all of the women who were caregivers for my grandmother will be attending the event, Lord pray I have the strength to read my poem aloud about my grandma “Bachan” without crying in front of everyone. I’m really looking forward to the community gathering for this reading and to see what comes.

Plus, a nerve-wracking exciting first for me! Tune in to OZCAT Radio, Vallejo’s community radio station (89.5 FM), on Thursday, September 18th at 10:30am for a live, on-air interview with me and Vallejo Co-Poet Laureate, Kathleen Herrmann talking all things writing and poetry. Hear me share and stumble and potentially embarrass myself but really, I’m sure all things will run smoothly and be interesting :)

Thank you all for your support of these events and my new book. It means the world to me and I hope to see you out there in the book stacks ✧˖°.⊹📖⊹.°˖✧

Hello all ˙ᵕ˙

On Wednesday, August 20th at 6pm, join us at Sausalito Books by the Bay for a poetry reading celebrating my new poetry book, Itinerant Songs. I’m very excited that poetry powerhouses Francesca Bell and Christina Hutchins will be reading some of their poems with me at this incredibly charming, waterfront North Bay bookstore.

Francesca Bell is the author of Bright Stain and What Small Sound and translator of Max Sessner’s Whoever Drowned Here. Her work appears in ELLE, New England Review, and Rattle. She is the Marin County Poet Laureate, translation editor for the Los Angeles Review, and teaches embroidery and poetry at San Quentin.

Christina Hutchins was the first poet laureate of Albany, California from 2008-2012. She has won several awards for her poetry, including The Missouri Review Editors Prize, National Poetry Review's Finch Prize, and a Summer Literary Seminar in St. Petersburg, Russia. Her second book Tender the Maker won the 2015 May Swenson Poetry Award, and her chapbook Radiantly We Inhabit the Air won the 2011 Robin Becker Prize. She holds a Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Studies: Process Philosophy and Poetry from the Graduate Theological Union.

I hope to see you there, and please do spread the word to any of your interested friends!

Huge thanks to everyone who made yesterday’s Poetry Night in Berkeley, CA such a special event. Reading alongside Ashia Ajani, Ocean Escalanti, and Lora Mathis was so good, so many heavy hitters and resonant powerful works. I’m so damn glad to be a part of the Bay’s vibrant poetry community and to be able to organize events like this. Major thanks to The Long Haul Infoshop for so graciously offering the space.

Alibi Bookshop in Vallejo, CA is now carrying Itinerant Songs! You can now get a copy of Itinerant Songs on the shelves at the following Bay Area Bookstores: Rebound Bookstore (San Rafael), Sausalito Books by the Bay, Wayfinder Books (Fairfax), Pegasus Books (Solano Ave, Berkeley), Spectator Books (Oakland), and Bookshop Benicia. You can also head to any bookstore and library in the U.S. and several other countries and request they order the book for you.

Thank you to the now 200+ readers who are now receiving this newsletter in your inbox! I’m so glad each of you are here. If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription ($33/year which is $2.75/month), which when added up is a big encouraging way to keep me writing, organizing, publishing, and making.

Upgrade to paid

My cup is absolutely filled up as the book launch for Itinerant Songs is off to such an exciting start. We packed the house at Rebound Books in San Rafael, CA for the initial book launch reading in mid-July, and I’m so grateful to my friends, family, colleagues, and community that surrounded me with support and open ears. I’m going to continue to celebrate Itinerant Songs’ release over the next few months with readings throughout the Bay Area (plus a virtual reading), and I’d love to see you at these upcoming events!

Order: Itinerant Songs (Poems)

On Sunday, August 3rd, I will be doing a virtual poetry reading with the wonderful Philadelphia-based Moonstone Arts Center at 11am PDT / 2pm EDT. For my friends and family outside of the Bay Area (but really for any and all of anyone), I especially encourage you to attend! I'll be reading from my new book, Itinerant Songs. Register for the Zoom link here.

Register: August 3rd Virtual Reading

Join us at The Long Haul Infoshop in Berkeley, CA on Sunday August 10th at 6:30pm for a celebratory poetry night. Featuring readings from Lora Mathis, Ashia Ajani, Ocean Escalanti, and I’ll be reading from Itinerant Songs.

Lora Mathis is a dear friend who is moving to Southern CA in September to start an MFA program, Ashia Ajani facilitated a Writing Nature Poetry workshop through Blue Stoop that inspired a number of poems in the book, and I’ve had the honor of publishing some of Ocean Escalanti’s poems in the Recenter Press Poetry Journal. You don’t want to miss this special night ✨ The event is free to attend, and all authors will have books / zines for sale.

More about the featured readers:

Lora Mathis is a writer, multidisciplinary visual artist, and the author of The Snakes Came Back. They share essays on their Substack “On Earth.”

Ashia Ajani is a sunshower, a glass bead, a carnivorous plant, an overripe nectarine hailing from Denver, CO Queen City of the Plains, unceded territory of the Cheyenne, Ute, and Arapahoe peoples. They are the author of Heirloom (Write Bloody Publishing, 2023) and a forthcoming nonfiction collection Tending the Vines (Timber Press, 2026).

Ocean Escalanti (she/her) is an indigenous visual artist and writer currently residing in Oakland, CA. Her self-published books and zines contain themes of connection to urban landscape centering modern indigeneity and creation as diary. She works as an arts facilitator at NIAD Art Center, a progressive art studio serving adults with developmental disabilities and monitors at Max’s Garage Press in Berkeley. Ocean has read her work at BAMPFA, Land and Sea, Pt. 2, and other gallery spaces throughout the Bay Area.

Bookstores currently stocking Itinerant Songs:

📍 Rebound Bookstore, San Rafael, CA.
📍 Sausalito Books by the Bay, Sausalito, CA.
📍 Wayfinder Books, Fairfax, CA.
📍 Pegasus Books on Solano Ave, Berkeley, CA.
📍 Spectator Books, Oakland, CA.
📍 Bookshop Benicia, Benicia, CA.

You can also head to any bookstore and library in the U.S. and several other countries and request they order the book for you!

Today’s the big day: my poetry book, Itinerant Songs, is now officially out in the world. Years in the making, Itinerant Songs is a weaving together of three parts: “On Work,” “On Country,” and “On Going Home.” I write about labor, housing, recovery, ancestry, God, and dreams. More about the book can be found through Recenter Press.

ORDER: ITINERANT SONGS

Thank you so much to all of you who preordered the book. I can’t wait for you to hold and read Itinerant Songs, to curl up in your favorite place whether in a park or on a train or in your bed or in a reading nook. Please do share photos with me and your friends when you get the book ⋆｡°✩

You can now order a copy of the book anywhere books are sold. Ordering through Recenter Press is the most direct way to support my work, and ordering through your local bookstore supports both my work and your local booksellers. Just pop in and give any bookstore or library in the U.S. (and several other countries) the book title, my name, or the ISBN: 979-8-218-64593-9, and they can order it for you! Itinerant Songs is currently on the shelf at Pegasus Books on Solano Avenue in Berkeley (if you get it from there, they’re more likely to keep carrying the book), and I’m in the process of getting it stocked in other bookstores throughout the Bay Area. You can also order the book through major online retailers, where leaving a review is also very much appreciated. Reviewing the book on Goodreads is also a huge help in getting the word out there.

We will be celebrating the book launch at Rebound Books in San Rafael tomorrow, July 16th at 6:30pm. Featuring poetry readings from Marin Poet Laureate Francesca Bell, former Marin Poet Laureate Rebecca Foust, and myself, you can read an article and interview with me about the upcoming reading in the Pacific Sun.

READ: PACIFIC SUN ARTICLE & INTERVIEW

If you can’t make the initial book launch event, stay tuned for upcoming readings at The Long Haul in Berkeley, Sausalito Books by the Bay, Book Passage in Corte Madera, Benicia Public Library, Fairfax Women’s Club (with Point Reyes Books), Mill Valley Public Library (with the Marin Poetry Center), and a virtual reading with Moonstone Arts Center. I am going all-in to celebrate Itinerant Songs, and I would be so thrilled and grateful if you joined me. More to be announced!

Thank you so much again to everyone who has taken an interest in Itinerant Songs, who are supporting the book through your purchases, through sharing online, talking about it with your community, reviewing the book, and booking me for readings. Thank you Tabitha Arnold for the striking cover art, and Lora Mathis, Fariha Róisín, and Sam Slupski for the advance reviews on the back of the book. It truly means so much to me. As the author and caregiver of this book, I am so ready for it to spread its wings and live more widely outside of me and within others.

Hello friends, family, community. I cannot believe July is here — the time-oriented part of my brain feels frozen somewhere several months ago and yet the days keep marching on. So many pieces have been rapidly changing in my personal life, family life, in the political world. How can we possibly keep up? I have hardly stopped to take a breath, a beat. Well here we go:

This month is book launch month for me, and while past-me would quietly release my projects into the internet ether and move right along, I’m excited to share that I’m learning to celebrate, really celebrate, in person with the people I love most and those who I may not know yet. And so, join me in celebrating the launch of my latest poetry book, Itinerant Songs, on Wednesday, July 16th at 6:30pm at Rebound Bookstore in San Rafael, CA. Rebound Bookstore is the coziest used bookshop in the North Bay co-owned by long-time radical organizer Joel Eis and his spouse, Toni Eis, and I am thrilled that we’ll be celebrating in such a warm and charming place.

Poetry readings will include Marin Poet Laureate Francesca Bell, former Marin Poet Laureate Rebecca Foust, and then I will be doing a reading from Itinerant Songs.

6:30pm: Light snacks, refreshments, social
7:00pm: Poetry readings featuring Rebecca Foust, Francesca Bell, and Terra Oliveira
8:00pm: Q&A and book signing

For those still getting to know my work: I’m a writer and visual artist born and raised in the Bay Area, and the founding editor of Recenter Press. My poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Bamboo Ridge, The Common, Puerto del Sol, and more, and I’ve authored several poetry, art, and photography books including And Still To Sleep, An Old Blue Light, and others. Itinerant Songs is my latest book, and my most developed and reflective work. My creative projects are an extension of my core practices and beliefs: in recovery, community, pilgrimage and retreat, and peoples’ movements globally.

Francesca Bell is author of Bright Stain and What Small Sound and translator of Max Sessner’s Whoever Drowned Here. Her work appears in ELLE, New England Review, and Rattle. She is Marin County Poet Laureate, translation editor for the Los Angeles Review, and teaches embroidery and poetry at San Quentin.

Rebecca Foust’s books include YOU ARE LEAVING THE AMERICAN SECTOR: Love Poems (Backbone Press 2024) and ONLY (Four Way Books 2022). Her poems won the James Dickey Prize and Telluride Institute Fischer Prize in 2024, and in recent years, the New Ohio Review, Pablo Neruda, James Hearst, and Poetry International prizes. Other recognitions include fellowships from The Frost Place, Hedgebrook, MacDowell, and Sewanee, and a Marin County Poet Laureateship. Rebecca works as a Senior Fiction Editor for Narrative Magazine and divides her time between northern Minnesota and northern California.

Itinerant Songs will be available for purchase at the event. You can also pre-order the book here.

See you there <3