Emerging BIWOC Poet Spotlight: Carissa Natalia Baconguis
This monthly series features poems by women of color in the early stages of their publishing careers. It is our intention to create more space at Perugia for the work of poets who are Black, Indigenous, and women of color (BIWOC). We hope using our platform to highlight this work will expand the readership of the poets we spotlight. This series aligns with Perugia’s mission to celebrate and support emerging women poets, inclusive of gender-expansive identities; featured poems will be from poets with no more than one published full-length collection. We’d love to hear from readers with suggestions for poems & poets to feature.
December 2025 Poet: Carissa Natalia Baconguis
The Barangay Reacts to Carlos’s Corpse, 2017
The barangay is watching,
saying to themselves
the death of a beautiful morena woman
is the most poetic image in the third world
yet none of them
know of her name
and how Dian pronounces it
with her sharpest r's.
Source
Sacred and Perishable, Nine Syllables Press, 2025
Poet bio
Carissa Natalia Baconguis is an author and educator from Laguna, Philippines. A graduate from Ateneo de Manila University, Quezon City, Philippines, and St. Cloud State University, Minnesota, USA, she is the winner of the 2024 Nine Syllables Press Chapbook Contest Award from the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center at Smith College, MA, the 2024 Button Poetry Pride Short Form Poetry Contest from Button Poetry, MN, and the 2019 Loyola Schools Award for the Arts from the Ateneo de Manila University. Her poems have been featured in Pa-Liwanag: Writings by Filipinas in Translation (Gantala Press/Tilted Axis Press, 2020), 聲韻詩刊 Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine Hong Kong, Young Star Philippines, and TLDTD Journal. She currently teaches Arts and Creative Writing at the University of the Philippines Mindanao in Davao City. When she isn’t writing, she also enjoys aerial circus performing and café hopping.