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Review of burning rice by Eileen Chong
Amber Beilharz
May 15, 2012
burning rice by eileen chong
Australian Poetry 2012burning rice is part of the 2012 New Voices series and the debut collection from Eileen Chong. The publication is a sleek, pocket-size 40 pages. Here lies great poetry, tight phrasing and an innate way of telling stories. The title evokes a nostalgic sense of home and food; the notion of absence circulates the poems, reminiscent of scents and fragrances. What strikes me first is Chong’s ability to immerse the reader in two landscapes: the old and the present and this imagery is unswerving, charming and utterly absorbing. Think the sacredness of bathhouses, mooncakes and photo albums braided with beautiful descriptions of quiet and reflected moments. In any other context, these glimpses could have been mundane but here they’re given breath.
The poetry feels like walking through a family home, all those details, ornaments with stories behind them. There’s a familiarity in reading these poems, despite the cultural difference. In ‘Before Dawn’, Chong textually dedicates the poem to her grandfather with wonderful use of language, shifting to present from passing: ‘Father of my father, I was not quite seven / when you died. We drove in darkness / before dawn broke’. In ‘My Hakka Grandmother’ there’s the lines ‘run / through the fields, feet unbound /’ and ‘rice husks, like your dark hair’ evocative of childhood and that memory of food and love combined. This poem describes well the borders of otherness, specifically in ‘I wonder where our bloodline begins. / We are guest people /’. In ‘Kelong’ Chong reminiscences 1980 via the use of photography, the imagery is haunting in ‘He holds the ghost / of a fishing line but has caught nothing’ and ‘my grandmother steams / the orange fish in a wok, when you grandfather picks out / its eyes with his chopsticks’. Like Chong, I can also taste ‘the sweet flesh’ and the poem conjures up a cinematic photograph that I hold in my mind.
In ‘Elementary Chinese’ Chong cleverly interprets Chinese characters literally by paring the radicals of the words armour and bird to equal duck: ‘a bird wearing armour is a duck’. On surface level the poem reads like a definitive list of obscure images or a riddle, the way you interpret the poem is essentially a linguistic puzzle. These lines are definitely playful! The line, ‘The sea: a mother wearing a hat / by the waves’ conjures up the frill on the sunhat and the sound of the ocean, accompanied by a sense of unease or uncertainty.
Halfway through the poems become smaller in size, but this spontaneous brevity gives enough space to let the other images stir and settle. ‘Clockwork’ is striking in its imagery:
and count. Weigh the shadow of the egg yolk.
The sonographer measures your minute spineand hands us a print of a ghost-speck
labelled ‘baby’ as I peel on my clothes.What I love so much about these lines is the precision and care, echoing that of the sonographer’s but also the way Chong manipulates expression. ‘ghost-speck’ is haunting and the reveal of ‘baby’ brings us into realisation of new life.
I am particularly taken by ‘Lu Xun, your hands’ in which Chong describes Lu Xun, Mao’s favoured poet of the 20th century. Lu Xun is really a seminal writer in Chinese Literature, whose work calls up sensations of being homesick and this is echoed strongly in Chong’s collection. This poem takes a romantic and admired tone, especially within ‘your hands / are clasped behind your back, / across the black silk / of your scholars dress’ and ‘Your thoughts / unfold before me, beginning / at the moss-green rocks. They linger’. The line breaks are most beautiful and suggest pausing to reflect and meditate on and within Lu Xun’s influence.
Eileen Chong figures out her heritage via food and ritual. This is a wonderful, rendered first collection which is warm, playful and reminiscent of the things we love and the landscapes in which we do so. You can purchase burning rice here.
The Under Age Launch Speech
Sharona
Apr 30, 2012
So we’re a bit late to the party, but at the launch of The Underage, Michael Nguyen-Huynh and Bethan Williamson made a speech. That speech is below. Enjoy!
Sian Campbell from Issue #86 V Reading At Avid Reader
Sharona
Nov 03, 2011
Brisbane Bookstore Avid Reader is hosting a regular Salon Event in conjunction with the launch of Anna Funder’s new book All That I Am – except for this one, Sian Campbell will be a guest reader.
As part of the event local Brisbane writer Sian Campbell, who is featured in the latest issue of Voiceworks (issue #86: V), will be giving a reading.
Because the kind people at Avid Reader like Voiceworks so much, they have offered free entry to all friends of Voiceworks who RSVP by email events@avidreader.com.au or phone on 3846 3422 before the event date.
Here are the details –
A Special Salon Event with Anna Funder
“All That I Am”
Thursday 10th of November
6.00pm for a 6.30pm start
Avid Reader Bookshop, 193 Boundary Street West End
Tickets $5.00 (includes a glass of wine) RSVP EssentialFor all the details head here.
NPW2011: archipelago by Brendan McDougall
Johannes Jakob
Sep 09, 2011
The following poem is from Voiceworks 86 V, which you can pre-order before the release date of September 23 right here.
archipelago
by Brendan McDougall (17)C.
One plus one really isn’t a lot. ‘U’ and ‘I’ are both in ‘beautiful’
but then again so is ‘futile.’ Train-tracks lack curvature: I would
much prefer my bicycle, even if the tyres are getting flat. I think
it’s something to do with your mass having an influence over its
own destiny. The further you travel, the more completely you are
disappointed, and the further it is back with a hangover. Every
night I light one of the matches you left at my house and drop it
into a glass of water and try to sleep with my eyes open.MC.
If home is where the heart is, address my letters to the moon.
Whether it is decay or disbelief, the skin around our eye sockets
recedes daily. Don’t be surprised when the meaning of life starts
to rearrange itself – the principle of entropy states that this
universe is designed to decompose. I will never be as close to you
as I was yesterday. A lonely backyard cigarette will not result in
pissing smoke. Paradise is laughing at yourself, by yourself. Take
the knuckle away from your nostril and let yourself sneeze. You
can’t grab onto anything with a closed fist.CCC.
People who live in glass houses shouldn’t bury bones in their
basement. You don’t light your room on fire so you can find your
wallet; you do it so you can forget you ever had one. The
skeletons in your closet aren’t covered by home and contents so it
pays to keep them on your person at all times. Life insurance is
proof that being alive is counterintuitive to human flourishing.
Sometimes I wish I could die and be reincarnated as a crematory
urn, and be important to someone without having to be filled
with anything more conspiratorial than dust.
NPW2011: One Day Archaeologists… by Daniel Graham
Johannes Jakob
Sep 08, 2011
The following poem is from Voiceworks 85 Other, which you can buy here.
One Day Archaeologists Will Find a Hole in the Shape of Our Embracing Bodies Where We Were Deposited in a Prehistoric Marsh
by Daniel Graham (22)Your love is a woolly mammoth,
large, ponderous and sought by primitive man.
My love is a sabre-toothed tiger,
dangerous, unwieldy and violent.Your love is a Diplodocus,
long, and searching for leaves.
My love is an Ankylosaurus,
defensive, armoured and clubbed at the tail.Our love is Cro-Magnon man,
painting the walls, sleeping in furs,
waiting for the sun and the deer to return.
Our love is Cro-Magnon man.Roaming the icy countryside,
roaming the icy countryside, roaming
the icy countryside, lighting fires,
with flint.
NPW2011: don’t tell me your dreams by Rosa Campbell
Johannes Jakob
Sep 07, 2011
[We are still having a teeny tiny linebreak issue. If you're looking at this on the main blog page, open up the individual post and it'll be all proper and good. Working on getting it fixed.]
The following poem is from Voiceworks 84 Pulp, which you can buy cheaply here.
don’t tell me your dreams
by Rosa Campbell (24)but in this one you are hiding
on the edge of Miami in a motel;
Echo Point or
North Palms.You said I could pick the name.
A smiling dolphin dives into the O –
of Echo
of North –her luminescence keeps you company
bathes you in neon through lacecurtains, underwear.
Every second second you are purple.
You smog up your room with menthol cigarettes to get rid of the smell
of air freshener
other bodies dirt
sad New Year’s Days.The dream goes for months.
You swan around in a robe, bare feet on manicured lawn
lazily eating boxed chocolates
reading the first pages of novels before casting them
restlessly aside.You trail your hands in a pool, slick like glass
you stare at yourself
but don’t look yourself
dustily glamorous
heavy with valiumto get rid of the smell.
You believe your horoscope
cultivate a mid-west accentdon’t tell me your dreams but
in this one
everything means exactly what it is
NPW2011: Mother Tongue by V. Tan
Johannes Jakob
Sep 06, 2011
[We are still having a teeny tiny linebreak issue. If you're looking at this on the main blog page, open up the individual post and it'll be all proper and good. Working on getting it fixed.]
The following poem is from Voiceworks 83 Technicolour, which you can purchase right here.
Mother Tongue
by V. Tan (24)i wish for incisions to be made in language:
tangled orthographic wedges excised
layers of phonological tissue grafted to form a
forked tongue
to speak things lost – never taught,
in the name of Your English Is So Good
concise essays
broad ‘strine telephone voice
mingling into new soil and prospect.immerse me, i begged this year,
mum, who else can i learn it from?
but our lingua franca resurfaced
worming through fissures of disuse.
we’re too used to speaking english with you.
did you know i stopped dreaming in hokkien years ago?i would trade precision for wholeness
nasal vowels for voiced consonants
to start dreaming
to speak
to listen to you
amah, nainai,
before you too are lost to me.
NPW2011: Wonder White by Adam Carr
Johannes Jakob
Sep 05, 2011
[Whoops, we are having a teeny tiny linebreak issue. If you're looking at this on the main blog page, open up the individual post and it'll be all proper and good. Working on getting it fixed.]
To celebrate Australian Poetry’s National Poetry Week, we’re going to publish a Voiceworks poem every day this week. On Friday we’ll publish a piece from V, our upcoming issue. Exciting!
The following poem is from Voiceworks 82 Hunger, which you can still buy for cheap here.
Wonder White
by Adam Carr (19)you type the words
‘something good’
into Google Images
and hit enter, just to see
if it’s something you’ve ever seen before
and it is.
you see:
children, coffee cups,
a rainbow, a woman’s nipples,
a corpse floating
face-down in a river
like your happiness.
you can’t deny
these are all very ok thingsindeed, but suddenly
a thing catches your eye,
and that thing
is bread.
ordinary bread, not bread
with polymorphic superpowers
(such as the ability to not be bread)
but bread; just bread.
you feel excessive and
materialistic and
guilt-stricken and
you deserve to.
it was there all this time
waiting for you, waiting
for sandwiches
something as good as bread
and you thought ‘bread,
fuck bread. i want women’s nipples!’but you’ve been lying to yourself
your entire life. you know
you will look back
and warmly remember not
fondling or areola,
but wholemeal
and nutella.
a pen by any other name
Susie
Jul 22, 2010
Submissions to Voiceworks have the option of being published under a pseudonym. A few months ago I was submitting a story that I thought could probably offend certain acquaintances of mine should they read it and figured it would be safest to use a nom de plume. Discussing possible names with my family members (as it was over Christmas) the most astute of them suggested that if I wasn’t able to publish the story under my own name I shouldn’t try to have it published at all. Fortunately it wasn’t selected and in hindsight I realise it wasn’t a very good story anyway. Funny how the powers that be at Voiceworks could divine the inwards shame I felt about it.
I don’t know if there’s any legitimate reason why submissions to Voiceworks should be under a different name. In my case, I thought there might be some sort of conflict of interest or moral dilemma involved and a pseudonym would protect everyone. Should I be writing things that people need to be protected from? Probably not. Or if I had written something outstanding, would the success have negated any ill or immoral feelings I had about it? Should we be worried about the moral implications of writing something, or should we plough on with our literary pursuits regardless of consequences, in a Helen Garner way?
Gone are the days of the Bronte sisters or George Eliot where we have to change our names just because we’re ladies – I haven’t noticed a crippling insistence on nineteenth century values at any Ed Comm meetings – besides, names aren’t included on submissions, so they are all treated with the same anonymity. But despite the crazy values we uphold at Voiceworks, I remember reading that JK Rowling was encouraged by publishers to make her sex more ambiguous so young boys wouldn’t be put off reading her books by her name. Which is frankly a bit weird when you think of the success of Diana Wynne Jones. Anyway the K wasn’t even part of her name, she stole it from her grandmother to go from Joanne Rowling to how we know her today.
Word Porn
Kat Muscat
Jul 18, 2010
or alternatively, is one person’s trash another’s night-in?Editors and lit nerds far and wide cannot be blamed for that vaguely sexual thrill that comes of a seriously well crafted sentence. The refreshingly brave imagery that successfully equates a first kiss to something you never realised was titillating until now. Writers who avoid the term ‘pregnant pause’ at all costs, god bless them. Donne’s metaphysical conceits (I was forced to study The Flea in y12, and now think it’s actually pretty cool). There’s a lot of good stuff there.
But that’s not what I’m talking about. Well, that’s not all at least.Little known fact: ManComm (that’s Managerial Committee of Express Media) have never blocked a story due to its content. This should be kept in mind for all kinds of content that is considered subversive, or as I like to think of it ‘awesome’. For a quick study of back issues, I bring your attention now to Bryce Joiner’s ‘Pushkin’ in SUPERFUNHAPPY, a story that made me cry on a plane. Or more recently, ‘Fog’ by Elspeth Muir published in Budget. Now there’s an example of surrealism and rape working together to create something special.So the question stands. Where is the smut, kids?And what is the difference between erotica and porn?In your opinion.
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Read the postMichael, you continue to astound me. Keep up the great work. ...
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