[Poet Spotlight] Sophia Terazawa

I'm calling attention today to the work of Sophia Terazawa, especially her recent digital chapbook, "I AM NOT A WAR" released earlier this year from Essay Press.

I AM NOT A WAR is a challenging and provocative work, engaging with a post-colonial perspective and taking us beyond many of our safe territories for addressing our shared, complicated histories. This is a highly visual and experimental work in many points. Many of her pieces linger with me. I particularly appreciated her works "History Three," "Self-Portrait of a Shaman," and "Cast of Characters,"  but really, would strongly encourage everyone to take the time to ponder each of the poems she presents in this collection.

As her publishers point out "I AM NOT A WAR spares nothing, explains nothing. It only trembles with rage and demands a kind of intimacy that could either scorch the earth or free us all."

Sophia E. Terazawa is a poet and performer of Vietnamese-Japanese descent working with ghosts. Her work appears in Perigee (Apogee Journal), Hysteria, The Fem, Project As[I]Am, and elsewhere, and you can find some more of her work at: sophiaterazawa.com.

Currently, she is a columnist for THE DECOLONIZER, where she writes about love and intimacy as radical healing practice. Definitely a writer to keep an eye on.