Chris Santiago
Monday, April 21
Doors: 7pm
Event: 7:30pm
at 2220 Arts+Archives
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The Poetic Research Bureau presents the Los Angeles launch of poet Chris Santiago’s newest book just out from Milkweed Editions, Small Wars Manual, a far-reaching collection of erasures and original poems examining the long shadow of American militarism and imperialism.
Following the reading, poet and scholar Jason Magabo Perez will join Christopher in conversation and Q&A.
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Stemming in part from a disturbingly mundane military document of the same name, Small Wars Manual is a how-to for imperialism that critically dismantles itself with each passing line, “a pidgin // containing elements // of animus and // insubordination.” In its wake, the very boundaries of oppression and resistance, art and justice, and power and truth are exploded.
Highly conceptual yet gut-wrenching, this meticulous and visionary masterpiece of erasure poetry and other forms sinks into the cold mechanics of American warfare in the Philippines and Vietnam to reveal a brutal rhetoric. In more autobiographical sections, Chris Santiago’s own Filipino immigrant background reveals hard-lived experiences, where “stars can guide // either bayonets // or refugees” and “even small wars waged // on the living room floor” cause trepidation and harm.
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Chris Santiago is a 2025 NEA Poetry Fellow and the author of Small Wars Manual and Tula, winner of the Lindquist & Vennum Prize and a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Nation, POETRY Magazine, the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day Series, and American Public Media’s The Slowdown. A past fellow of the McKnight Foundation, the Mellon Foundation/ACLS, and Kundiman, he received his PhD from USC and teaches at CalArts. He lives in Pasadena with his wife and two sons.
Jason Magabo Perez is a Filipino American writer, performer, scholar, teacher, and anti-disciplinary Gemini thinker. Perez is the author of numerous works in poetry and performance, including his most recent book of poetry, I ask about what falls away (Kaya Press, 2024). From 2023-24, Perez served as San Diego Poet Laureate and was a Poet Laureate Fellow with the Academy of American Poets. Currently, Perez is an Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at CSU San Marcos.