Strange Places

blurbs for SCAR/CITY are in:

Posted by Daniela Elza on Mar 22 2025

I am thrilled to share these blurbs for the book. Thank you Leilani Farha, and Renée Sarojini Saklikar for spending time with this book, and for lending your words to it.

“In SCAR/CITY, Daniela Elza creates a disturbing and very real portrait of urban displacement. Through fractured words and the use of space itself, she allows her readers to physically experience urban life as so many of us know it: the destabilization of community, nature, home, and human dignity in the face of greed-driven, relentless development. This is a work for our times, revealing the heavy human and natural toll exacted by the financialization of housing, documenting not just the physical erasure of neighbourhoods but also the deeper spiritual costs. Elza’s poetry will move you to reflect deeply, to mourn loss, and, through poetic persuasion, to defend what’s left.” Leilani Farha, The Shift

“A riveting collection, precisely right for this cultural moment: Daniela Elza’s assemblage of grief and rage is transmuted onto the page into beautiful lines that break, unfold, and then re-inhabit space. Shivers of recognition accompanied my reading. This is poetry as an invitation to both action and contemplation: What is home and how will it endure for us? How will we live in our cities, in places we can afford? These poems serve as way-finders for anyone passionate about land use, urban planning, and community survival.” Renée Sarojini Saklikar, author of Children of Air India