The Light Sang As It Left Your Eyes

Winner of the Philippines National Book Award for Poetry, Eileen R. Tabios has a reputation for uniquely melding ekphrasis and transcolonialism. The Light Sang as It Left Your Eyes is her most overtly political work in which she references her roots as a Marcos Baby, a member of the generation that grew up under Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship. Jacket Magazine has said of her work that it is a critique of presumptions of transparent referentiality and unproblematic narrative–coupled with the aesthetic pleasure of stretching the imagination with formal innovations[it] has been an important feature of all of Tabioss poetry.