“ten-cent flower & other territories” With Poet Charity E. Yoro

The Seaside Public Library will welcome poet Charity E. Yoro for a talk and readings from her debut poetry collection, “ten-cent flower & other territories.” The event will take place at 2:00 p.m. in the Community Room and there will be a time afterwards for a Q&A. Additionally, Beach Books will be available for book purchases after the event.

Charity E. Yoro’s “ten-cent flower & other territories” sets the notion of Hawai‘i as a “taste of paradise” alongside the acknowledgment that this homeland is “a museum of pretty / stolen things.” In this collection that is at once searing and tender, Yoro reckons with the effects of conquest and tourism on the islands, writing of and through erasure, interruption, and displacement. This question of legacies—what painful histories and what gifts the coming generations will inherit from us—is at the heart of ten-cent flower & other territories. Through poems that range in form from haiku to crosswords to abecedarian primers, Yoro asks us to consider the urgency of language: what words will offer those who come after us, and will these words tell the truth of our histories, in all their terrors and delights? The collection won the Stafford/Hall Award for Poetry at the 2025 Oregon Book Awards.

Born and raised on the east side of O`ahu, where she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in marketing and English, Charity spent the first part of her career abroad—studying in Thailand, teaching in South Korea, and serving in the Peace Corps in Madagascar—before moving to the continent (New Jersey to Northern California to Oregon). She currently lives in the metro Denver area with her husband, two children, and sweet rescue pets, Rumi & Fiona.