Luisa A. Igloria was born and raised in Baguio City in the Philippines, where her abilities as a poetess were first recognized and nurtured. Having first relocated to the USA in order to pursue graduate study at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Luisa has called America home for some time.

Her experience of the Philippines as a society slowly emerging from the shadows of colonialism (first by the Spanish and later by the Americans)—and the memories of those experiences—have had a significant and lasting influence on her poetry. In her series of poems based around the Chicago World´s Fair of 1904, which are included in Juan Luna´s Revolver, Igloria vividly and mercilessly brings to life the fate of over a thousand indigenous Filipinos (but no one knows exactly how many) who were brought to the USA against their will in order to serve as living exhibits for the “civilised” westerners to gawp and point at.

Earlier this year as Egypt stood on the brink of revolution, Luisa was reminded of the events of the 1986 People Power Revolution and inspired to compose her poem Landscape, with an end and a beginning.

Igloria is the mother of four daughters, and a highly-respected poet whose works have received widespread acclaim. She is also an integral member of an academic community at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, where she teaches in the MFA program in Creative Writing and is a tremendous source of support and inspiration to her students. She is happy to be seen as a role-model for other working mothers, who still manage to find time to stay in touch with and explore their creativity.

—Claire Hart

Photo of Luisa A. Igloria by John-Henry Doucette

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