California Silence

California Silence was selected by Emily Wallis Hughes for the 2026 Ottoline Prize.

An intricate tapestry of urban, natural, elemental, and linguistic worlds, California Silence by Stella Santamaría maps a future beyond the fraught border of language politics between English and Spanish. "The poet said nothing, nada," yet Santamaría invites us into a full and inclusive world, dissolving separation: the "Floricultura Pacific." In her transformative debut collection of poems, Santamaria renders "California" as both a futurist concept and graspable imaginary. Each line in Santamaría's distilled poetry reads like a song through her beams of "glistening sauvignon." This California is bicoastal and international, with the soundscape of Florida unfolding into "neon rind sunsets" through "Cuban banter."