Poet Patria Rivera launches 4th poetry collection

Poet Patria Rivera launches 4th poetry collection

PAT RIVERA
Photo: Susana Molinolo

TORONTO–The Time Between, Filipino Canadian poet Patria Rivera’s fourth poetry collection, was launched recently by Signature Editions at Gerrard Art Space (GAS) Gallery in Toronto May 6.
Growing up in the Philippines, Rivera said, events and personal histories formed much of her poetry. “We are all products of our pasts, and to ignore our past and current history will be like shortchanging ourselves. We need to express our present and yet be mindful of our roots, and pay attention to the forces around us that are shaping our world.”

As Rivera explained, “The ‘I’ in this book moves from person to person and from person to place,” following every immigrant and refugee’s journey and urge to shape the chaos of their individual lives into language that is sometimes undecipherable, sometimes ludic or comic. “Although the poems try to mine the anguish and instability of the present world, I hope readers will find joy in the spirit of these poems, even when it’s scant and spare; even when it’s living off scraps of love, solace and exaltation; even when it’s yearning to let the mind or the heart go uncaged, if only for a transitory moment.”

The eye sees what it remembers. In The Time Between, poems burrow deep inside rusty rooms, the hearts of sleepless men and women, the anguish pounding the fault lines of monsoons and long rains, the littered and abandoned alleyways of shell-shocked hamlets and towns.

The Time Between is Patria Rivera’s fourth poetry collection. Her first poetry collection, Puti/White, was shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry. She has co-authored two chapbooks, Weathering: An Exchange of Poems and Sixth from the Sixth. She has also received the Global Filipino Award for Poetry, and her work is featured in the U.S. Library of Congress Asian Collection of Literary Works. Rivera took journalism from the College of Mass Communications at University of the Philippines, and has worked as news editor of the Toronto-based Catholic Register newspaper and editor of Catholic Missions In Canada magazine.

For more information about The Time Between, please go to http://www.signature-editions.com/…/single…/the_time_between.

THE TIME BETWEEN BOOK DISPLAY
Photo: Susana Molinolo