Description

NightwoodEditions,paperback

Publication Date:April 5, 2022

Publisher Marketing:A much-anticipated debut collection from one of Canadas most promising emerging poets

Pebble Swingearns its title from the image of stones skipping their way across a body of water, or, in the authors case, syllables and traces of her mother tongue bouncing back at her from the waters reflective surface. This collection is about language and family histories. It is the authors attempt to piece together the resonant aftermath of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, which stole the life of her paternal grandmother. As an immigrant whose grasp of Mandarin is fading, Wang explores absences in her caesuras and fragmentationthat which is unspoken, but endures.

The poems in this collection also trace the experiences of a young poet who left home at seventeen to pursue writing; the result is a series of city poetry infused with memory, the small joys of Vancouvers everyday, environmental politics, grief and notions of home. While the poetics of response are abundant in the collectionwith poems written to Natalie Lim and Ashley Hyndthe last section of the book, “Thirteen Ghazals and Anti-Ghazals after Phyllis Webb,” forges a continued response to Phyllis Webb on Salt Spring Island, and innovates within the possibilities of the experimental ghazal form.