SWALLOWING CLOUDS

Swallowing Clouds

An Anthology of Chinese-Canadian Poetry

edited by Andy Quan and Jim Wong-Chu

Arsenal Pulp Press 99

reviewed by paulo da costa

Louise Bak, Fred Wah, Evelyn Lau, Larissa Lai and Rita Wong, will be names the Calgary reader will recognize. They either live or grew up in Calgary, have been guests of WordFest or the Markin-Flannigan Writer-in-Residence Program and, conceivably, have seen Chinook clouds happily swallowing a cold prairie day.

Of the writers featured in this anthology, and unfamiliar to me, the work of Laiwan was particularly interesting. In recent years Laiwan has been searching and researching the effects of technology on consciousness and perception. Swallowing Clouds profiles the second installment of "Notes towards a body", which continues Laiwan's exploration into the erasure of the "body" of race, class, gender, and sexuality along with cultural and geographical contexts within technological systems.

"i am remembering the time i was not yet born/when there was no such thing as time/and no such thing as remembering/no, i am wrong/i remember, but not through memory/(...)/i, waiting to be born become remembered solely by a frozen image/of a frozen time/of the not yet born/of the still being born/of the still being and the still born/of a still life in a portrait/longing/ for a body

Swallowing Clouds' ethnic focus, provides a bridge to the poetics of a culture as varied and as challenging to define - in its differences - as one seeking to define Canadianess. English becomes their hyphenated bridge to cross such distinct shores. In the river below flows the poetry. Our/their common language.