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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.
Play Edcommitorial, Listen
Johannes Jakob
Dec 20, 2011
As promised in the magazine, you can now listen to the edcommitorial from Play, which is confusingly but sensibly itself called Listen. It’s both written and read by Rosanna Stevens.
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.
How to buy presents for book lovers
Elizabeth Redman
Jul 20, 2010
Buying presents is never as easy as you expect. It’s a particular problem when buying for the book lover. They like books, let’s get them a book, I think to myself. Oh wait. Will they already have it? Will they like it? Will they turn their nose up and forever doubt my literary tastes? Maybe I should get them a nice Moleskine instead.
It seems one solution is to buy them a gift that looks like a book but isn’t one. Like this:
I’ve been given a tea cup and a notebook with the Penguin classics design. I’ve also bought similar gifts for heavy-reading friends.
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.
KSP Writer in Residence Program
Johannes Jakob
Jul 07, 2010
The Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers’ Centre is offering some residency programs. This includes one for writers under 25, the deadline for which is July 30. The writer will be given a two-week residency, in which they can develop or complete a work in progress. In 2011 there will also be some residencies offered for established and emerging writers. Full details are here.
An email I sent yesterday, or, how to submit well
Johannes Jakob
Jul 06, 2010
One of our submissions this cycle was from a writer, over 25, from the US. He/she pasted six poems into his/her email, but failed to paste into it a number of the details we ask for, all together ignoring at least four discrete elements of our submission guidelines. We have gotten a few of these kind of submissions in the past, but never one this bad. In case it wasn’t obvious, I don’t intend to name the author here, but I would like to post my response below, because I hope it might be useful and/or interesting.
Tweeting Work In Progress
Elizabeth Redman
Jun 22, 2010
Sharing your work with others can be a terrifying experience. Readers can be pretty brutal in their criticism, though, so it’s key to workshop and polish your writing as much as possible before publication.
One helpful hint doing the rounds of the internet this week is to share snippets of your work on Twitter. Pick one line and post it with the hashtag #wip, suggests blogger Natania Barron. This will force you to look closely at your writing while easing you into the process of sharing your work, she adds.
Creative writing courses: learning to play practical jokes
Sam Cooney
Jun 16, 2010
There’s a shedload of debate about the legitimacy of creative writing courses. The oft-repeated question: ‘Can creative writing really be taught?’ quickly becomes an annoying one. Therefore I will sidestep the issue myself, and point you to some of the (many many many) others who have tackled it. The following is a tiny selection of discussions about creative writing courses.
The New Yorker’s Louis Menand believes that workshopping works. MJ Hyland told The Wheeler Centre that it can be taught, but that we have “to recognise and accept that it’s really tricky shit“. Meanjin’s Jess Au compares creative writing courses with writers’ groups. And The Guardian dips into this topic regularly: like in 2003, in 2007, in 2009, and earlier this year.
Not many of these articles make any groundbreaking arguments; it seems the dialogue itself is worthy enough. And they all walk a tightrope, straining to be impartial.
music for writing
Sam Cooney
Jun 10, 2010
Do you like to write with music playing, either in the background or blasting in your earphones? Or do you prefer silence?
I almost always need music to write. It’s become a need, mainly because I’m always writing in a busy space – home (with many housemates), cafes (with angry baristas) or libraries (with yelpy weirdos) – but also because it channels my thoughts.
John Cleese says this about creativity: ‘The most dangerous thing when writing is to be interrupted.’ He recommends creating boundaries of space (in conjunction with boundaries of time) so that you create an oasis in which to write. Cleese likens creativity to a tortoise. Only when it feels safe will it poke its head out, and the slightest disturbance can scare it back inside its enclosure.
I think that for me, having the appropriate music (turned up to eleven) gives me a space by blocking out all aural interruptions. And subsequently any visual distractions (like in a public place) become redundant as they have no aural context.
For a while, way back when, I was able to write to any music – even the radio was fine. As long as it played without me having to do anything, I was okay. I’d have Bob Dylan carping or Leonard Cohen rumbling or Iron and Wine trolololololing all around the room, and I would write.
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