Department of English

Looking West is a collection of poems that explores the intersection of faith, doubt, and community in the face of grief. The speaker endures a journey of deep self-reflection as they attempt to find a sense of place across a rural Texas landscape and within the urban sprawl of Northern Los Angeles. The poems contemplate loss as it relates to others, loss of self, and loss of security in spiritual spaces as the speaker navigates the throughlines that bind them to their roots. It ultimately attempts to ask, rather than answer: who are we if not where we came from?