In And Other Rivers, lives are carved open from tip to tail and laid out for display. A child watches her father perform a lunar new year ritual. First-generation migrants swim for shore. A woman dives into fast flowing water. This collection of poetry is about fluid longings, and about the searches and meanderings one embarks on to fulfil those longings. And Other Rivers starts close to home, winds its way across foreign landscapes, and finds its way back again.
A taste...
Flight
There are many ways to tame a bird without first killing it.
Wing clipping, an old favourite. Leather ropes, coiled
around the reptilian ankle. Then there are leg-irons
the size of women’s rings Or, to go back to basics, twine.
The type they take birds to market with at the back of a scooter.
Strung feet up, eyes wide, wing bones sinking to the earth.
And from elsewhere, Samsui and After Word.