A review by prettymuchbooks
Ironbound Fados by Carla Sofia Ferreira

hopeful inspiring reflective slow-paced

5.0

Repost from bookstagram 🤓

Day Twelve of #TheSealeyChallenge
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“...I long
for continuous days that flow
into one another. Instead
my life is a fretwork of
fragments—strings connected by
inevitable distances.
I am lost in the fury of transit,
writing my poems in a
dark room on paper I cannot see.
Memory bites the new tongue
and I dream of home on a used pillow.”
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from Carla Sofia Ferreira’s poem, “In Transit”
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About the poet: Carla Sofia Ferreira is a poet from Newark, New Jersey and a daughter of first-generation immigrants from Portugal 🇵🇹. In 2019, she coedited the immigrant and first-generation anthology of poetry, No Tender Fences, which raised over $2000 for immigrant rights group RAÍCES - Texas. She reviews books for multiple literary communities and it was actually in a poetry review of hers that I first encountered her writing. 🤓
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This micro-chapbook was a joy to read and reread ever more slowly as it only had eleven poems to its name. Quality is always better than quantity and you can bet you’ll find that in this microchap for sure! 💯👌🏽
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Selected excerpts from another favorite poem of mine: ⬇️⬇️

“Leaving to return is a rhyme we learn as immigrants
and in this city, we sing saudade as thin as the green plastic bags that catch

on the branches of small, emerging trees, roots digging into this earth that is, after all,
mostly iron at its core. We love these streets so much we wash them

with water and with bleach on Sunday mornings before church. In Portuguese,
I love you means let me clean this for you, and we show it with chapped hands and old
rags.”

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“Wandering, I know the legend and have memorized it like the prayers from catechism,
like the past perfect tense from porkchop school: I leave, I return, I forget, I remember,

I go nowhere but where I am ironbound.”
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from the poem, “Ironbound”
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I legit had something to highlight for every poem in this microchap and I know I already have my eyes on memorizing one or two! 😇 I look forward to seeing more of Ferreira’s work in future publications and I eagerly await the day I can hold a physical copy of a book of hers — it’s just a matter of time! ✨