An elegant debut collection that illuminates the contours of un/belonging.

Dayo: a Tagalog word referring to someone who exists in a place not their own. A wanderer, migrant worker, exile or simply a stranger. At its core, the poems in Dayo interrogate whether belonging can exist in a society suffused with violence. Here, the poet, as a stranger, confronts the politics of recognition by offering his vision. Reflexive and lyrical, this collection embodies the true curiosity and tenacious spirit of a dayo seeking a place to replant, tend, and grow delicate roots.

"Great poetry re-creates the world, and Perez's world is here, built from the fleeting moments you don't always notice, built beautifully, built to last."
- Wayde Compton, author of The Outer Harbour and The Blue Road: A Fable of Migration

"By the end of all the belovedness catalogued in this book, you too will be heavier with the weight of all that is most gorgeous about this world."
- Ed Bok Lee, author of Mithocondrial Night and Whorled

"One of the things that most impresses me about this lush, lyrical and soulful collection is its ability to hold hope alongside melancholy and despair...With incredible empathy and insight, he writes for "the fragments of ourselves, pieced together by grief."
- Jen Currin, author of Trinity Street

At once cinematic and elegiac, this book is an unforgettable contribution and a remarkable achievement."
- Adrian De Leon, author of barangay: an offshore poem

Marc Perez is a Filipino poet and writer living in the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh nations. His fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in The Fiddlehead, EVENT Magazine, decomp journal, CV2, PRISM international, and Vallum, among others. A recipient of grants from the BC Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts, he has a BFA from the UBC School of Creative Writing. He is the author of the chapbook, Borderlands (Anstruther Press, 2020), and Dayo is his first full-length poetry collection.

Marc Perez's profile page

"Dayo by Marc Perez is a collection of poetry that is ranging and delicate, allusive and taut, insightful and present. Perez has a voice that telescopes expertly from the particular and local to the diasporic and world-encompassing, sometimes in the same breath line, sometimes in the same image.

Great poetry re-creates the world, and Perez's world is here, built from the fleeting moments you don't always notice, built beautifully, built to last."
-Wayde Compton, author of The Outer Harbour and The Blue Road: A Fable of Migration

"Dayo is the most gracious of invitations into a newfound home somewhere singular between the plant and animal kingdoms, the natural and urban worlds, pragmatic fulfillment and sagacious longing, lockdown and liberation, the sacred and profane, the Philippines and the West. Here, in Perez's universe, displacement, disembodiment, and reptilian republics threaten to continue to take root and reign. Thus, the poet re-imagines a reverential re-embodiment where 'Form is the leaf that sprouts from your toes' in a stunningly observed world of 'ordinary sacredness,/like the unfurling of fiddleheads.' By the end of all the belovedness catalogued in this book, you too will be heavier with the weight of all that is most gorgeous about this world."
-Ed Bok Lee, author of Mitochondrial Night and Whorled

"One of the things that most impresses me about this lush, lyrical and soulful collection is its ability to hold hope alongside melancholy and despair. Even as Perez grapples with the brutality of global borders and immigration policies, among other atrocities, he also writes toward a flowering, where seeds of pain become a 'leafy garden/where cicadas could return.' Perez writes for day laborers and minimum wage workers, for students in debt and crocodiles in captivity. With incredible empathy and insight, he writes for 'the fragments of ourselves, pieced together by grief.'"
-Jen Currin, author of Trinity Street

"Dayo is a lush cartography of a world in verse. The crawling streams and stubborn gardens in Marc Perez's poems unfold with the exquisite patience of Henry David Thoreau and Dionne Brand all at once, then pull into focus through the lives that give these scenes their perpetual motion. At once cinematic and elegiac, this book is an unforgettable contribution and a remarkable achievement."
-Adrian De Leon, author of barangay: an offshore poem