In this virtuosic ensemble of poems sung in keys traditional and procedural, Christine V. Lao appraises the capacity of words to trace the gap, discern the displaced, and refract the lost. Resolute and spirited, the poems honor the poet’s duty to reckon with erasures past and present, with violence both enforced by the state and ensconced in intimate relationships, without absolving language of its role in the imposition of these harms. Training its attention on legal documents and the lexicon of law, Affidavit of Loss confronts the terrifying power of language as law to dictate the course of our lives, laying bare the persistent desire to find other ways of being in the power of language as poetry. —Conchitina Cruz ©2025
Author
Christine Veloso Lao, a Philippine lawyer, received Ateneo de Manila University's Dean's Award for Poetry and the Essay in 1995. She was editor of the Filipino section of Heights, Ateneo's literary magazine, and was a fellow at the second Ateneo Summer Writer's Workshop and Silliman National Writers Workshop. She was a staff writer for The Sunday Times Magazine and wrote two columns ("Afterthought", "Generation Ek") for the Manila Times. She has edited a series of books on law and policy reform for the Asian Development Bank. Her work has appeared in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, The Manila Times, The Sunday Times Magazine, and the National Book Review. Her poems have appeared in Under the Storm: An Anthology of Contemporary Philippines Poetry and the special issue of Kritika Kultura. Her stories have been featured in Philippine Speculative Fiction; Philippine Genre Stories; the Philippines Free Press; and the Philippines Graphic. She earned her MA in Creative Writing at the University of the Philippines.
