Barbara Jane Reyes


Barbara Jane Reyes is an American poet whose work "explores the translatable and untranslatable collisions of writing, self and culture."

Early life

Reyes was born in Manila, Philippines, and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. She received her B.A. in Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. As an undergraduate, Reyes "served as editor in chief for maganda magazine, and witnessed the emergence of Filipino American literary figures." Reyes received her M.F.A. at San Francisco State University.

Career

Reyes is the author of Gravities of Center, Poeta en San Francisco, for which she received the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets, and Diwata.
Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous publications, including 2nd Avenue Poetry, Asian Pacific American Journal, Boxcar Poetry Review, Chain, Crate, Interlope, New American Writing, Nocturnes Review, North American Review, Notre Dame Review, Parthenon West Review, as well as in the anthologies Babaylan, Eros Pinoy, InvAsian: Asian Sisters Represent, Going Home to a Landscape, Coloring Book, Not Home But Here, Pinoy Poetics, Asian Americans in the San Francisco Bay Area, 100 Love Poems: Philippine Love Poetry Since 1905, Red Light: Superheroes, Saints and Sluts, and Graphic Poetry.
Reyes is an adjunct professor at University of San Francisco’s Yuchengco Philippine Studies Program. She has previously taught Creative Writing at Mills College, and Philippine Studies at University of San Francisco. She co-edits Doveglion Press, a publisher of political literature, with her husband poet Oscar Bermeo. Reyes currently resides in Oakland, California.

Published works

Full-length poetry collections
  • Gravities of Center.
  • Poeta en San Francisco.
  • Diwata.
  • To Love as Aswang: songs, fragments and found objects.
  • Invocation to Daughters.
  • Letters to a Young Brown Girl.
Full-length literary nonfictionWanna Peek into My Notebook? Notes on Pinay Liminality.
Chapbooks
  • Easter Sunday.
  • Cherry.
  • West Oakland Sutra for the AK-47 Shooter at 3:00 AM and other Oakland poems.
Poems online
  • “Estuary,” “Cherry,” “Pink.”, Issue 8.
  • “,” “,” “.”, 2006.
  • "The Night Manny Pacquiao KO’ed Oscar De La Hoya.", 2009.
  • "One Question, Several Answers.", Spring 2010.