Reverse Requiem

Whiting Award–winning poet Ina Cariño’s sophomore collection, Reverse Requiem, explores mental health and wellness, ancestry and lineage, and the enduring complexities of human connection. In a world marked by the failures of capitalism, Reverse Requiem speaks to the lonely parts within all of us—and to the love that persists within community and ourselves, despite everything.

These soulful and elegiac poems, written in Cariño’s signature saturated lines, follow a speaker shaped by both subtle and profound personal tragedies. The collection’s emotional resonance is deepened by its formal inventiveness: poems shift in length, tone, and use of white space, mirroring the fractured, nonlinear journey at the book’s heart. The title, Reverse Requiem, suggests a retracing of a life: rather than unfolding chronologically, the poems are guided by the speaker’s shifting mental and emotional states. Early pieces carry a stark, dirge-like weight that gradually gives way to glimmers of hope—proposing that healing, though never linear, remains within reach. 

Cariño wrote Reverse Requiem gradually, over the course of a year spent immersed in other creative disciplines, including music and visual art. A mentor once told them, “Even if you stop writing, you're never truly leaving it behind—you’re always a writer if you stay open to the world.” That openness permeates this collection. Where Feast, Cariño’s debut, turned inward, Reverse Requiem reaches outward. While it remains grounded in introspection, this second book reflects a year of emotional risk and connection—extending itself toward the world and those who inhabit it.