Holy Boys

Andrés N. Ordorica

Book of the Month: April 2025

Reviewed by Sean Wai Keung

The latest poetry collection from Edinburgh’s own Andrés N. Ordorica is filled with themes of resurrection. Places and people come to life in poems like ‘A Man of Silences’ and ‘Memory Map’ – ‘Saturday morning means / together they’ll strip / the walls of their weekly / dirt and memory’ – while beyond the physical we also have languages and culture being reborn in different ways throughout.

Some of these rebirths are painful, for instance in ‘If I Could Pray The Gay Away’, in which the repeated phrase of ‘I would not’ serves as a simple but powerful mantra, which starts life as a phrase of defiance but by the end feels almost comforting. Others are surprisingly fun, both in terms of language and form. ‘Forty-One Monarch Butterflies Dancing in a Summer Shower’ is almost pure visuals, and precedes the delightfully multilingual ‘In the Name of the Joto, Mariposa Y Maricón’: ‘let the música y ritmo protegerte my little apostles, praise the joyful colour’.

The danger for a poet utilising so much variation can be that it makes their book feel untethered, almost like a ‘best of’ recent poems rather than a collection, in both senses of the word. Ordorica avoids this by ensuring that no single form overstays its welcome. The majority of the 50-plus poems in Holy Boys fit on a single page or two, with notable exceptions being ‘Empty Words’, which starts the collection, and the aforementioned ‘Memory Map'‘ It’s an effective technique, and means that rather than any poem starring as an anchor for the rest of the collection, the poems demand to be read within the contexts of the others around it. Because of this, Holy Boys is a fast, enjoyable read, despite some of the heavy subject matter throughout.

There is a hopefulness and joy that permeates the book as a whole and ensures that while established fans of Orodorica will find new things to enjoy here, new readers will also be left wanting more.

I will plant you
in each new place.
Show you the world
is so much more than hate.

From 'Here There Everywhere'

Holy Boys is published by Polygon Books, April 2025

Sean Wai Keung is a poetry, performance and food maker, living in Glasgow. He is Gutter magazine’s poetry reviews editor.