Dayo - Paperback

by Marc Perez (Author)

WINNER OF THE 2025 GERALD LAMPERT MEMORIAL AWARD

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.

Author Biography

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, Vallum, and Magdaragat, an anthology of Filipino-Canadian writing, 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.