Dayspring requires your full attention and more. Oliveira's verse is beautiful, but definitely more than I bargained for. It's dense with allusion and subtext. Each and every line I savoured slowly and even then felt like I wasn't fully taking in all that was offered.

But I was completely consumed by these pages. He weaves between biblical and modern tales of (queer) love, grief, and life, constantly pulling all the heartstrings. I think this book hit just right for me as a queer ex-christian. All of the warm fuzzies from the biblical scriptures I was raised on without any of the hellcasting sins of the modern churches. All in all, I'm in love with this book. I simply wish I had more capacity to undertake a full study on Oliveira's verse.

"Dayspring" is not an especially wordy book - a combination of prose poem and dialogue, I'd be surprised if the word count cracked 70,000. But it is an incredibly dense book: allusions and references to medieval mystics sit side by side with queer theorists like Leo Bersani. I consider myself fairly well-read, but I'm fairly certain that a solid half of the references here went flying over my head. As such, this is not a light read; in order to get the most from it, it needs to be read slowly, and probably with a Bible study guide on hand. That's not an anti-recommendation, by the way: it's a very rewarding experience, just not an easy one.