Calling Home
Born in Puerto Rico, Naomi Ayala moved to the United States in her teens and earned an MFA from the Bennington College Writing Seminars. A bilingual poet writing in Spanish and English, she is the author of Calling Home: Praise Songs and Incantations (2013), This Side of Early (2008), and Wild Animals on the Moon (1997), which was selected by the New York City Public Library as a 1999 Book for the Teen Age. Her work has also appeared in Boriquén to Diasporican: Puerto Rican Poetry from Aboriginal Times to the New Millennium (2007), Latino Boom: An Anthology of U.S.
In hauntingly clear verses, Naomi Ayala's collection Calling Praise Songs and Incantations evokes vivid imagery of contemporary life superimposed on a realm of mysterious spirits and ancient wisdom. The poet uncovers energy and magic in unexpected places and skips from world to world, strategy to strategy, as she traverses the known and named obstacles of racial, cultural, sexual, class, and linguistic identities to arrive at an intersection of infinite possibilities.