A Geography That Does Not Hurt Us – River River Books 2024
Carla Sofia Ferreira’s debut poetry collection A Geography That Does Not Hurt Us lives and breathes longing and saudade—across immigrant generations, across city streets and bus stops, parks and gardens, continents and oceans. With a great tenderness of attention, Ferreira travels between the song traditions of the ode and elegy, the prayer, and the fado. To long is also to understand many layers of loss, from inhumane immigration laws to the cruelty of climate change, and these present realities and crises inform the context in which the poet asks: how do we create a world that will not hurt us? These are poems for immigrant daughters, poems for Newark’s Ironbound and Portugal, poems for anyone who has felt grief or distance or loss—across time zones, across geographies. Go here to order your copy!
I need you to know that none of this is a metaphor.
I need you to know that when I tell you my Tia Madalena
had a voice that sounded like a hundred church bells and
that she washed my hair one July morning with fresh olive oil,
that the olive oil was real and so were her hands in my hair.
Elegy with Azeite e Pão de Ló
Ironbound Fados – Ghost City Press 2019
This microchap, an open love letter to Newark, New Jersey and testament to saudade as the connective fabric across distance and loss, was published as part of Ghost City Press’s 2019 summer series. Go here to download your free copy!
Carla Sofia Ferreira 