Loved itthis is split into three sections firstly it kind of contemplates language and translation then it contemplates the transformative nature of poetry and then the third section contemplates one's own position within their family
Bright Fear (2023)
Others: Overwhelmingly positive Following their award-winning debut, Flèche (2019), comes Mary Jean Chan's gleaming second collection: Bright Fear. Through poems which engage fearlessly with intertwined themes of identity, multilingualism and postcolonial legacy, Chan's latest work explores a family's evolving dynamics, as well as microaggressions stemming from queerphobia and anti-Asian racism that accompanied the Covid pandemic.Yet Bright Fear remains deeply attuned to moments of beauty, tenderness and grace. It asks how we might find a home within our own bodies, in places both distant and near, and in the 'constructed space' of the poem. The contemplative central sequence, Ars Poetica, traces the radically healing and transformative role of poetry during the poet's teenage and adult years, culminating in a polyphonic reconciliation of tongues. Throughout, Chan offers us new and galvanising ways to 'withstand the quotidian tug- / of-war between terror and love'.
- ISBN:
- 9780571378906
Genres: nonfiction, poetry
Lists: …
Similar books
1 of 6
Woke up No Light
Leila Mottley
2024 · 1 review
Others: PositiveA poignant, rousing debut book of poetry, full of life, from the former Youth Poet Laureate of Oakland, Californiawoke up no light is a Black girl’s saunter turned to a woman’s defiant strut. These are the hymns of a new generation of poetry. Young, alive, yearning. A mouth swung open and ready to devour. A quest for home in a world that knows only wasteland and wanting.Moving in sections from “girlhood” to “neighborhood” to “falsehood” to, finally, “womanhood,” these poems reckon with themes of reparations, restitution, and desire. The collection is sharp and raw, wise and rhythmic, a combination that lights up each page. From unearthing histories to searching for ways to dream of a future in a world constantly on the brink of disaster, this young poet sets forth personal and political revelation with piercing detail.woke up no light confirms Leila Mottley’s arrival and demonstrates the enduring power of her voice—brave and distinctive and thoroughly her own.
Why?
What made the match, strongest first
Also nonfiction and poetry76%Jack Edwards loved both12%Similar descriptionsPersonalize your recommendations12%Bad Diaspora Poems
momtaza mehri
2023 · 1 review
Others: Positive*SHORTLISTED FOR THE FORWARD PRIZE 2023*Diaspora is witnessing a murder without getting blood on your shirt.'A once in a generation poet'CALEB FEMI, author of POOR'Energising, radical and remarkable'JACK UNDERWOOD, author HAPPINESS'A new turn in global anglophone poetry'KAYO CHINGONYI, author of A BLOOD CONDITIONThe definition of diaspora is the dispersion of people from their original homeland. But what does it mean to write diaspora poetry? Momtaza Mehri's debut collection poses this question, taking us from Mogadishu to Naples, Lampedusa to London. Mixing her own family's experience with the stories of many others across nineteenth- and twentieth-century Somalia, Bad Diaspora Poems confronts the ambivalent nature of speaking for those who have been left behind.We meet the poet, the translator, the refugee, the exile, and the diaspora kid attempting to transcend their clichéd angst. Told in lyric, prose and text messages, and taking place in living rooms and marketplaces, on buses and balconies, on transatlantic journeys and online, these are essential poems about our diasporic age.
Why?
What made the match, strongest first
Also nonfiction and poetry77%Jack Edwards loved both13%Similar descriptionsPersonalize your recommendations10%Signs, Music
Raymond Antrobus
2024 · 2 reviews
Others: PositiveAcclaimed poet Raymond Antrobus returns with Signs, Music, a stunning book of poetry that captures imminent fatherhood and the arrival of a child. Structured as a two-part sequence poem, Signs, Music explores the before and after of becoming a father with tenderness and care—the cognitive and emotional dissonances between the “hypothetical” and the “real” of fatherhood, the ways our own parents shape the parents we become, and how fraught with emotion, curiosity, and recollection this irreversible transition to fatherhood makes one’s inner landscape.At once searching and bright, deeply rooted and buoyant, Raymond Antrobus’s Signs, Music is a moving record of the changes and challenges encompassing new parenthood and the inevitable cycles of life, death, birth, renewal and legacy—a testament to the joy, uncertainty, and incredible love that come with bringing new life into the world.
Why?
What made the match, strongest first
Also nonfiction and poetry79%Similar descriptionsPersonalize your recommendations21%Heritage Aesthetics
Anthony Anaxagorou
2022 · 1 review
Others: PositiveWhat does it mean to have 'heritage', and how do we perform or undo it? In these daring and sonorous poems, Anaxagorou conducts a researched unpacking of two countries whose dividing lines of a colonial past are still visible and felt. Uniquely engaged with the complexities of Cyprus and the diasporic experience, these poems map both an island's public history alongside a person's private reckoning. They offer a ferocious and uncompromising look towards the damaging historical structures that have led to now. Fearless, intensely honest and hopeful, Heritage Aesthetics merges Anthony's gift for performance and his brilliant experimentation with form to create a vivid insistence to communicate a self in the world.
Why?
What made the match, strongest first
Also nonfiction and poetry82%Jack Edwards loved both14%Similar descriptionsPersonalize your recommendations4%The Fire This Time
Jesmyn Ward
2016 · 240 pages · 4 reviews
Others: Overwhelmingly positiveNational Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward takes James Baldwin’s 1963 examination of race in America, The Fire Next Time, as a jumping off point for this groundbreaking collection of essays and poems about race from the most important voices of her generation and our time.In light of recent tragedies and widespread protests across the nation, The Progressive magazine republished one of its most famous pieces: James Baldwin’s 1962 “Letter to My Nephew,” which was later published in his landmark book, The Fire Next Time. Addressing his fifteen-year-old namesake on the one hundredth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, Baldwin wrote: “You know and I know, that the country is celebrating one hundred years of freedom one hundred years too soon.”Award-winning author Jesmyn Ward knows that Baldwin’s words ring as true as ever today. In response, she has gathered short essays, memoir, and a few essential poems to engage the question of race in the United States. And she has turned to some of her generation’s most original thinkers and writers to give voice to their concerns.The Fire This Time is divided into three parts that shine a light on the darkest corners of our history, wrestle with our current predicament, and envision a better future. Of the eighteen pieces, ten were written specifically for this volume.In the fifty-odd years since Baldwin’s essay was published, entire generations have dared everything and made significant progress. But the idea that we are living in the post-Civil Rights era, that we are a “postracial” society, is an inaccurate and harmful reflection of a truth the country must confront. Baldwin’s “fire next time” is now upon us, and it needs to be talked about.
Why?
What made the match, strongest first
Also nonfiction and poetry93%Similar descriptionsPersonalize your recommendations7%Inner experience
Georges Bataille
1943 · 251 pages · 1 review
Others: PositiveHis is a journey marked by the questioning of experience itself, until what is reached is sovereign laughter, non-knowledge, and a Presence in no way distinct from Absence, where "The mind moves in a strange world where anguish and ecstasy coexist."
Why?
What made the match, strongest first
Also nonfiction and poetryPersonalize your recommendations100%
Loved it
Loved itI absolutely loved bright feir by Mary Jean Chan this is a fantastic wonderful collection of poetry some more traditional poems some more sort of Pros poetry and I just love the way Mary jeene Chan writes