Adrian De Leon was born in Manila, Philippines but called Scarborough, Toronto home for many years. After graduating with an honours BA in English literature from the University of Toronto, Scarborough, he received direct entry into the PhD programme in history at the University of Toronto. His dissertation is entitled “In the Image of Industry: Indigeneity and Migrant Labor in the Making of Filipino America.” De Leon is now residing in Los Angeles and works as an ethnic studies professor at the University of Southern California.
Poetry
barangay: an offshore poem
Hamilton, Ont.: Buckrider Books/Wolsak & Wynn, 2021.
Forthcoming
Poetry
Rouge: Poems
Toronto: Mawenzi House, 2018.
PS8607 .E23525 R68 2018
Publisher’s Synopsis
Toronto the not-so-good? This series of poems is a response to the 2012 Danzig Street mass shooting at a block party in Toronto’s Scarborough area, during a period when gun violence had reached a peak in the city. Here the city’s east end becomes a source of poetic inspiration, and the east-west subway line as the organizing structure. Going from west to east, each poem is informed by a TTC subway stop, inspiring form, voice and content. We get meditations, commentary, and visual poetry. The conclusion is a pair of poems, both titled “Rouge”: the first makes use of reports, songs, and tweets that appeared following the shooting and the second is a lyrical response.