An Old Blue Light by Terra Oliveira
Written while in travel and in transition, An Old Blue Light evokes the feeling of roads, trains, new environments, and new sensations in a dialogue between the inner and outer world. Oliveira's work is often existential, sometimes questioning, sometimes resolving, but always with feeling. Threads of old grief and contented detachment accompany honest illustrations and prose, weaving together a collection on the border between the ascetic contemplations of a mystic and the vulnerable confessions of a person who dreams and loves.
"Terra Oliveira has always been able to bring the achingly human and the cosmic together, their poetry being the meeting point. This book feels like a triumph over loss. It feels like a discovery within oneself. Both ethereal and grounding at the same time. I feel as if I am experiencing their personal journey with them. They do not fail to inspire."
— Emery Allen, author of Become. and Soft Human
Terra Oliveira is a writer and visual artist from the San Francisco Bay Area, and the founding editor of Recenter Press. A finalist in the 2024 Sandy Crimmins National Prize for Poetry, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The American Poetry Review, Bamboo Ridge Press, Protean Magazine, Paperbark Magazine, and elsewhere. She is of Azorean-Portuguese, Chinese, Native Hawaiian, and mixed Eurasian descent.
Her poetry and illustration collection, An Old Blue Light, won the Where Are You Press Poetry Contest (judge: Clementine von Radics) in 2016. Terra was the Artist-In-Residence at The Schoolhouse at Mutianyu at The Great Wall of China in March of 2017, and she was also a writer-in-residence at the Hope Villa Artist Residency in the Western Ghats of India in Spring 2016. During the week, you can find her managing two bookstores in the North Bay. She believes in recovery, community, pilgrimage and retreat, and peoples' movements globally.
Collection of poetry and illustrations. Author photo by Nicholas Sese. 66 pages. Black & White. Published by Recenter Press in September 2017.