There’s no place (Like Home): Craig Santos Perez’s poetry as military strategy

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis essay is interested in hearing the voices obscured by militarisation. It looks at the poetry of Craig Santos Perez, a native Chamorro from Guam, in an attempt to begin puzzling out the idea of transformation in Guam and the military’s complicity in the process. To date, Perez has published three books of poetry, which are part of his multi-book project. Perez’s poems are unique because they do not end. Instead, each poem picks up from the last time he left it: what he refers to as a long poem. By looking closely at Perez’s three books of poetry, this essay examines the diverse forms of transformation Guam has experienced over 300 years of colonisation and militarisation. In doing so, I will demonstrate the important role the imagination plays in understanding, responding to, and doing something about anthropogenically driven environmental change.