[04/22/25] Oliver, Connie Mae: dormilona

dormilona is a bilingual book of poetry exploring dream states, distance, and the rituals of sleep. In this collection, the fluidity of language reflects the elusive nature of time and memory, centering on matrilineal consciousness and variable notions of home. The ancient forests surrounding Mount Roraima and the bright pink sands of Playa Colorada inhabit the speaker's dreams, and in these topographies, she finds harmony with brain wave patterns drawn from sleep studies. Meaning both “nightgown” and “sleepyhead” in Venezuelan Spanish, dormilona weaves a neural network linking sleep to matrilineal memory, time, and geography.