dormilona - Paperback

by Connie Mae Oliver (Author)

dormilona is a bilingual book of poetry exploring dream states, distance, and the rituals of sleep in Venezuelan culture. In these poems, the fluidity of living in two languages reflects the elusive nature of time and memory, centering on the speaker's relationship with her mother, grandmother, and homeland. The ancient forests around Mount Roraima and the bright pink sands of Playa Colorada inhabit her dreams, and in these topographies she finds harmony with the patterns of brain waves in her sleep studies. Meaning both "nightgown" and "sleepyhead" in Venezuelan Spanish, dormilona weaves a neural network linking sleep to language memory, family, geography, and history.