How Terra Oliveira weaves faith, activism,
and belonging into verse
For Bay Area poet Terra Oliveira, writing has always been both a journey outward and a way back home.
Oliveira, who grew up in Benicia, recalls that her early work often carried an undertone of restlessness. “In one of my first poetry books, An Old Blue Light, I wrote from a place of restlessness and wanting to leave home,” she says. Lines like “I am leaving California. / I do not wish to be so small” captured that urgency to move away. But time, distance, and the inescapable pull of family eventually led her back.
Oliveira’s newest collection, Itinerant Songs, reflects this evolution. Divided into three sections: “On Work,” “On Country,” and “On Going Home”, the book explores transience, belonging, and the meaning of home. “Home is wherever my family is,” says Oliveira. Her grandmother, Teruko Azevedo, who lived in Benicia for over 50 years and suffered from dementia in her final years, became a central figure in these later poems. “The need to hold on to precious, limited time with family comes through a lot in the later poems of Itinerant Songs and in my pull to live in or near Benicia,” she explains.
Oliveira’s heritage spans the Hawaiian Islands, the Azores, Southern China, Guadalajara, and Europe. This multifaceted lineage informs her storytelling in both personal and political ways. “One of the poems in Itinerant Songs, ‘Nā Kahawai (The Rivers) of My Great Grandmother, Maude,’ traces my family’s ancestry as if they were the merging of many rivers,” she says, “and the grief of estrangement and disconnection from homeland.” Her work often moves across landscapes, from Philadelphia to Hawai’i to Portugal, reflecting her lifelong effort to reconcile many intersecting histories and identities…