Ferreira, Carla Sofia: A Geography That Does Not Hurt Us

River River Books, paperback

Publication Date: January 23, 2024

Publisher Marketing: Carla Sofia Ferreira's debut poetry collection A Geography That Does Not Hurt Us lives and breathes longing and saudade—across immigrant generations, across city streets and bus stops, parks and gardens, continents and oceans.

With a great tenderness of attention, Ferreira travels between the song traditions of the ode and elegy, the prayer, and the fado. To long is also to understand many layers of loss, from inhumane immigration laws to the cruelty of climate change, and these present realities and crises inform the context in which the poet asks: how do we create a world that will not hurt us? These are poems for immigrant daughters, poems for Newark's Ironbound and Portugal, poems for anyone who has felt grief or distance or loss—across time zones, across geographies.

Carla Sofia Ferreira is a poet and teacher from Newark, New Jersey. Author of micro-chapbook Ironbound Fados (Ghost City Press 2019), her poetry and prose have appeared in The Rumpus, Glamour, Washington Square Review, december, EcoTheo, underblong, Okay Donkey, and Cotton Xenomorph, among others. A recipient of fellowships from the Sundress Academy for the Arts and DreamYard Rad(ical) Poetry Consortium, her poetry has received several nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. One of three students selected to write a creative thesis in poetry during her senior year at Harvard College, Ferreira holds graduate degrees in English and education from the University of Cambridge and Stanford University, respectively. The daughter of Portuguese immigrants, her writing explores transit and transience, urban geographies and distance, tenderness and translation. Her work as an English teacher continues to inform and nourish her writing as a practice of community and care.