My Funeral Gondola
Manoa Books
Honolulu, HI
El León Literary Arts
Berkeley, CA
elleon20042005@gmail.com
Publication Date: May 2013
ISBN 978-0-9833919-8-2
Paperback $18
6 x 10 inches
60 pages / Poetry
Small Press Distribution
orders@spdbooks.org
510-524-1668
In moving poems that affirm the power of language, Fiona Sze-Lorrain journeys through shifting places and times, deaths and imagined deaths, with sharp, lyrical insight.—Arthur Sze
These are cool, spacious poems, often with a lot of white space to do your thinking in. Elegant or evocative sentences feel like they’ve been plucked by tweezers and laid on a white cloth for inspection. But there’s also a stark drama to many of her lines, and a little capsule of enigma left rolling about in them, too.—Tales from the Reading Room
In this, her second book of poetry, Sze-Lorrain writes about rifts and departures, memory and experience. With lyricism and restraint, her poems meditate on the bittersweet struggles and inner intensities of a solitary life. These graceful poems arise out of a supremely concentrated attention.
Sze-Lorrain's debut poetry title, Water the Moon, was published in 2010. In addition to her books of translation of Chinese poets from Zephyr Press, Sze-Lorrain has translated several contemporary French and American authors. She co-edited Sky Lanterns: New Poetry from China, Formosa, and Beyond (2012) and On Freedom: Spirit, Art, and State (2013), both from the University of Hawai‘i Press/Manoa. An editor at Cerise Press and Vif Éditions, she is also a zheng harpist and orchid healer.