- 115: SPACE
with A Sometimes
114: NO THEME 13
with J Toledo & C Tse
113: INVISIBLE WALLS
with A Walker & D Disney
112: TREAT
with T Dearborn
111: BABY
with S Deo & L Ferney
110: POP!
with Z Frost & B Jessen
109: NO THEME 12
with C Maling & N Rhook
108: DEDICATION
with L Patterson & L Garcia-Dolnik
107: LIMINAL
with B Li
106: OPEN
with C Lowe & J Langdon
105: NO THEME 11
with E Grills & E Stewart
104: KIN
with E Shiosaki
103: AMBLE
with E Gomez and S Gory
102: GAME
with R Green and J Maxwell
101: NO THEME 10
with J Kinsella and J Leanne
100: BROWNFACE
with W S Dunn
99: SINGAPORE
with J Ip and A Pang
97 & 98: PROPAGANDA
with M Breeze and S Groth
96: NO THEME IX
with M Gill and J Thayil
95: EARTH
with M Takolander
94: BAYT
with Z Hashem Beck
93: PEACH
with L Van, G Mouratidis, L Toong
92: NO THEME VIII
with C Gaskin
91: MONSTER
with N Curnow
90: AFRICAN DIASPORA
with S Umar
89: DOMESTIC
with N Harkin
88: TRANSQUEER
with S Barnes and Q Eades
87: DIFFICULT
with O Schwartz & H Isemonger
86: NO THEME VII
with L Gorton
85: PHILIPPINES
with Mookie L and S Lua
84: SUBURBIA
with L Brown and N O'Reilly
83: MATHEMATICS
with F Hile
82: LAND
with J Stuart and J Gibian
81: NEW CARIBBEAN
with V Lucien
80: NO THEME VI
with J Beveridge
57.1: EKPHRASTIC
with C Atherton and P Hetherington
57: CONFESSION
with K Glastonbury
56: EXPLODE
with D Disney
55.1: DALIT / INDIGENOUS
with M Chakraborty and K MacCarter
55: FUTURE MACHINES
with Bella Li
54: NO THEME V
with F Wright and O Sakr
53.0: THE END
with P Brown
52.0: TOIL
with C Jenkins
51.1: UMAMI
with L Davies and Lifted Brow
51.0: TRANSTASMAN
with B Cassidy
50.0: NO THEME IV
with J Tranter
49.1: A BRITISH / IRISH
with M Hall and S Seita
49.0: OBSOLETE
with T Ryan
48.1: CANADA
with K MacCarter and S Rhodes
48.0: CONSTRAINT
with C Wakeling
47.0: COLLABORATION
with L Armand and H Lambert
46.1: MELBOURNE
with M Farrell
46.0: NO THEME III
with F Plunkett
45.0: SILENCE
with J Owen
44.0: GONDWANALAND
with D Motion
43.1: PUMPKIN
with K MacCarter
43.0: MASQUE
with A Vickery
42.0: NO THEME II
with G Ryan
41.1: RATBAGGERY
with D Hose
41.0: TRANSPACIFIC
with J Rowe and M Nardone
40.1: INDONESIA
with K MacCarter
40.0: INTERLOCUTOR
with L Hart
39.1: GIBBERBIRD
with S Gory
39.0: JACKPOT!
with S Wagan Watson
38.0: SYDNEY
with A Lorange
37.1: NEBRASKA
with S Whalen
37.0: NO THEME!
with A Wearne
36.0: ELECTRONICA
with J Jones
Eileen Chong
Summer, Rain
the afternoon heat nearly unbearable we spill forth, naked, towards the water cautiously picking our way to avoid submerged rocks and broken branches read the current, you call out I am tired of reading everything three cormorants perch on the …
Posted in 112: TREAT
Tagged Eileen Chong
Mahjong
East Wind The gate is locked. A woman exits the house, and we enter. My grandmother takes her seat at the table: her braceleted arms intersect the others’ as they churn the tiles ceaselessly, dry seas breaking over papered felt. …
Posted in 109: NO THEME 12
Tagged Eileen Chong
Glitter
Write how quiet it is. ‘Starvation Camp Near Jaslo’, Wislawa Szymborska The lines stretch out like a child’s drawing, wavering, circling the block. These are people; they clutch envelopes, papers, proof of lack. They are hungry, they are afraid of …
Posted in 107: LIMINAL
Tagged Eileen Chong
Pantoum for My Parents
My mother listened to my poem, and it filled her with shame. My father asked me to explain it. I was both sorry and afraid, and it filled me with shame. My poem is about racism—and how I was sorry …
Posted in 100: BROWNFACE
Tagged Eileen Chong
After
And yet there are new shoots growing from the bamboo in the spring sunshine and the cat is warming himself on the pavers. The violets are ankle-deep and three snails have left their silver trails across the path where they …
Posted in 93: PEACH
Tagged Eileen Chong
5 Translated Eileen Chong Poems
Image courtesy of The Planthunter / Red Room Company. Mid-Autumn Mooncakes It’s nearly mid-autumn. I spy the tins at the Asian grocer—gaudy red peonies unchanged for forty years. Of course I buy the mooncakes with double yolks: here in Australia, …
Posted in TRANSLATIONS
Tagged Annie Drahos, Eileen Chong, Grace Feng, Isabelle Li, Jiana Zhu, Jill Chang Chien, Jinghai Chao, Ke Zhang, Steven Langsford, Weihui He
Haar
… I must go in. Memory’s fog is rising. Selected Letters, Emily Dickinson In the corners mould is blooming like grey and black snowflakes. Next to the window, white paint blisters; water swells its skin. On winter mornings moisture ghosts …
Posted in 80: NO THEME VI
Tagged Eileen Chong
Review Short: Eileen Chong’s Painting Red Orchids
In his short story ‘A Little Ramble’, champion of the anti-heroic Robert Walser says, ‘We don’t need to see anything out of the ordinary. We already see so much’. In her third collection, Painting Red Orchids, Singaporean Australian Eileen Chong testifies to ordinary experience as the sensory and emotional kaleidoscope of the individual.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Eileen Chong, Ling Toong
Review Short: Adam Aitken’s One Hundred Letters Home
It has taken me more than a hundred days to read Adam Aitken’s One Hundred Letters Home. The book arrived in my letterbox in Sydney at the beginning of May. Autumn turned into winter, and the fragments of Aitken’s palimpsest-memoir started to unfold themselves to me.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Adam Aitken, Eileen Chong
Kim Cheng Boey Reviews Eileen Chong
In a suite of three poems praising the legendary beauty, Consort Yang Guifei, the Tang poet Li Bai draws on the virtues of the peony, a flower that with its luxuriant petals and luminous colours embodies feminine beauty and allure.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Eileen Chong, Kim Cheng Boey, Li-Young Lee
DAS GEDICHT + Cordite = Deutsch Poems of Campbell, Chong, Fischer, Leber, Skovron, Vickery and Wright
Cordite Poetry Review has teamed up with venerable German literary magazine, DAS GEDICHT, to publish translations of Australian works into German. These translations are directly aimed for German readership (this is to say that the English originals are not on …
Posted in GUNCOTTON
Tagged Alex Skovron, Eileen Chong, Luke Fischer
Lesson
‘Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.’ ‘Wild Geese’, Mary Oliver Over the empty distance between continents we transmit facsimiles of affection. Your daughter, the elder, has learnt to count. She can list the things I …
Posted in 61: NO THEME III
Tagged Eileen Chong
Siobhan Hodge Reviews Eileen Chong
Eileen Chong’s Burning Rice is steeped in images of food, family and connectivity. The poems thematically span geographical and chronological distances in order to make links between cultural and ancestral origins. Culinary references combine to create comforting images of solidarity in the face of isolation and anxiety. However, this is not a chapbook wholly steeped in nostalgia.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Eileen Chong, Siobhan Hodge
Asian Australian Diasporic Poets: A Commentary
This essay provides a survey of the poetry of some Asian Australian poets, and does not attempt to be definitive. Diasporic poetics raise more questions than they answer and are just as much about dis-placement as about place, just as much about a ‘poetics of uncertainty’ as about certainties of style/nation/identity.