Review
Eileen Chong opens her collection with the dedication, “A poem for my ancestors”. Or, perhaps this is how she closes it. We Speak of Flowers explicitly invites multiple ways to approach the reading experience. Its 101 fragments can be read in any order, and mirror the 101 days of Buddhist grieving practices. (Her ancestors’ Hakka, Hokkein and Perankan religious and cultural practices are outlined in the Author’s Note.) The poet shares that, in Buddhist belief, “the soul exists in a liminal space for the first forty-nine days [after death], before it is finally reborn after a total of 100 days”.
What struck me was how the dedication frames the collection as a single poem, consisting of 101 fragments. I’d like to say my first reading of this collection embraced Chong’s invitation to flit back and forth with no regard for the little numbers printed above each piece, especially since that’s how I usually read poetry collections. But no – I read it the conventional way, front to back. I was eager to follow this ritualised process of grief with the writer, all the way to the end. Or rather, the circular place of “No end: to this grief, to our love” (101).
While reflecting on personal experiences of loss and grief, Chong takes a discerning eye to writing from lived experience. As early as her second fragment, she considers the difference between honesty and truth.
2.
I want to be honest in this poem, which is not the same
thing as being truthful. I will speak of what happened,
or what could have happened, and of what continues to
happen: to you, to me, to them, to us. I will use what tools
I have, what the page will hold. What passes for words.
What words pass us.
This reflexivity comes as a surprise, though a welcome one. It is hard to acknowledge how our own experience of reality colours the truth of a situation. Applied to the rest of this collection, these words are a reminder of the writer’s own fallibility, and that this murky space is where art thrives. Despite their simplicity, the repetition of ‘will’, ‘what’, ‘could’, ‘you’, ‘me’, ‘us’ disorientates, creating a constellation rather than a unidirectional line.
Chong’s frankness about the limitations of poetry and “what the page will hold” continues throughout the collection. A later fragment describes “[a] bed so narrow it barely contains / a single body lying flat on its back”. Given Chong’s interest in the restrictions of her artistic medium, I imagined both a single hospital bed and a blank page. Both can “barely contain” Chong’s memories of her ancestors, let alone their actual lives and histories. Words are not enough to represent the reality of state violence – of “a woman bearing my name […] detained, then arrested and deported” (98).
Poetry cannot fully capture the memory of a person or a people, nor will it bring someone back. And for most of us, poetry is not activism on its own. So, where do we go outside of the page? Chong guides us to consider our other senses, especially taste. Her poetry is interspersed with simple and vivid food imagery, like “steaming, fried prawn noodles / thick with gravy” (27). Importantly, Chong draws back the thin veil between taste and memory: “I close my eyes, still taste them” (25). Unlike the inadequacy of words, taste lingers intensely. Taste is powerful – perhaps more powerful than poetry.
Writers of the Asian diaspora are often disparaged for writing about food and flowers. While this criticism can place an unfair burden on writers and overlooks the hegemonic workings of the publishing industry, the relationships between art, identity and colonial resistance are worthy of interrogation. This is especially pertinent given University of Queensland Press’ recent decision to terminate and pulp 5,000 copies of Jazz Money’s Bila – turning a story about a Wiradjuri waterway into real environmental degradation and erasure. Many authors have since terminated future contracts with the publisher.
Given its title and interest in connecting to ancestral experiences, We Speak of Flowers is pulled into the broader cultural conversation about diasporic writing on unceded, sovereign land. While the collection does not pose clear answers and is perhaps not directly invested in this discourse, it did have me reflecting on the motifs we are drawn to as diasporic writers, as well as who decides their worth, and what artwork has the privilege of seeing a wider audience.
While reading, I found personal value in Chong’s exploration of loss and ancestry, and was content to sit with known motifs, especially when they are used well. After all, for Chong, “this hunger” —and, by extension, these symbols—are described as her “only inheritance” (29).
Given the opening dedication, it’s no surprise that Chong is interested in inheritance and its absence, which she articulates through an almost esoteric view of ancestry. Multiple poems speak to ghosts and possession, with a dreamlike, hazy finish:
31.
[…] Memories, histories, pathways.
Some days I wake up and forget what bed, which country,
whose body I inhabit.
32.
[…]
If a ghost catches you, they will
take your body. You’ll trade places.
If I’m not careful, I’ll remember
what it feels like to float, unanchored.
These brief, two-line stanzas in poem 32 carry motion, where one line is snatched by the next or traded with the following. Here, ancestry is an active experience. Rather than being temporally separated from our ancestors, it is possible to trade places with our ghosts or even become them. This concept challenges Western understandings of linear time, much like the structure of this collection does. We “run from / towards the past” (20) as we read.
The book’s strength is its ability to embrace nonlinearity and the subversive tools poetry offers. Chong notes this in the reflective lines of poem 37:
[…] it is
true that I am impatient with prose / there are many rules that /
poetry can circumvent […]
This fragment fills an entire page, taking up space with playfulness in its impatient, block-like structure, as well as in the use of forward slashes instead of real line breaks. I am glad to see Chong circumventing the rules, even as she acknowledges the limits of poetry. Her approach brings insight and depth to a hard part of life.
Despite centring grief, We Speak of Flowers does not feel burdened by its heaviness. Perhaps because grief is not always heavy. Like love, it slips into both the everyday and the otherworldly. Like this collection, it is non-linear. Grief is cradled by meaningful ritual and inadequate, human words. The 101st day comes eventually, calling for rebirth, calling for “No end: to this grief, to our love” (101).
Riya Rajesh (she/her) is a youth worker living and writing on unceded Wurundjeri land. She values the sense of community that art can create and cares about making creative spaces more accessible. You can find her work on stages, as well as in Verge 2021, Baby Teeth Journal, Locative Magazine and HOISZN.