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A stunning first book from one of the Chinese-Canadian community's most insightful and grippingly honest young voices, Intimate Distances is a deep exploration of the vicissitudes of interpersonal connection and family relationships. Lam writes poignantly and vividly about her background: her father's early death during her childhood, the end of marriage, the gradual loss of her mother to Alzheimer's and, most recently, childbirth.
A stunning first book from one of the Chinese-Canadian community's most insightful and grippingly honest young voices, Intimate Distances is a deep exploration of the vicissitudes of interpersonal connection and family relationships. Lam writes poignantly and vividly about her background: her father's early death during her childhood, the end of marriage, the gradual loss of her mother to Alzheimer's and, most recently, childbirth.
one
Prelude
Rewind
Conception
Coming to Canada
A Doctor's Wife
Son
The Quiet One
Tag
Vista Cruiser
Dad
Absentee
Faith
two
Grandmother
Headlines
The Doctor's Widow
Film Loop
Camouflage
The Hyphenated
Father's Day
Studio Portrait
Learning Chinese
Babysitting
three
Conspiracies
Mango
Memory Test
Step on a Crack
Child
Maternal Archaeology
Photograph
Flight
four
Neighbourhood
Bank Street
Narcissus
Examination
Ring
Marriage
Departure
Chateau Lake Louise
Games
The Busy Man
Lament of the Bowl
Consideration
The Last Time
five
Aftermath
Loop
Legacy
Ankara
Mementos
Honey
Father's Day
Signs
Arrival
Colostrum
This Poem
I Don't Understand Love
Cemetery on Boxing Day
Fiona Tinwei Lam is a Scottish-born, Vancouver-based writer whose
work has appeared in literary magazines across the country, as well
as in the Globe & Mail, and anthologies in Canada, the US and
Hong
Kong. Her work has also been featured as part of B.C.'s Poetry in
Transit program. Her book of poetry, Intimate Distances (Nightwood
2002), was a finalist for the City of Vancouver Book Award. Twice
short-listed for the Event literary non-fiction contest, she is a
co-editor of and contributor to the anthology of personal essays,
Double Lives: Writing and Motherhood (McGill-Queens University
Press, 2008). Her work will also be appearing in Best Canadian
Poetry 2010 (Tightrope Books, 2010), edited by Lorna Crozier. Her
most recent collection of poetry, Enter the Chrysanthemum (Caitlin,
2009), depicts the journey into single parenthood, exploring themes
of family, love and loss. She is a former lawyer.
"Fiona Lam's poems explore the contours of love, pain, and
tenderness "with scalpel precision." Here, both mournful witness
and exuberant renewal prove the heart's endurance in the face of
grief. Lam takes the reader through the cycles of death and life
with a fine sensitivity, an intense passion, and a resolute
courage. In his "surrender/ to radiance" Lam taps into hidden
reservoirs of emotional strength that lead us to regeneration."
-Rita Wong
"Lam, a Vancouverite born in Scotland, has been appearing in
journals, but this is her first book. It's one to be savoured. Her
approachable and sometimes spine-shivering lyrics zero in on the
turning points in the story of one Chinese-Canadian family, her
own. Using simple language about complex events and emotions, Lam
shows how childhood is often more a benefit to the parental
observers than to the children, and that this fact hopscotches
along from one generation to the next."
-George Fetherling, Vancouver Sun
"The poems are explosive -- the family in shards, which the book
patiently pieces together. The combination is fascinating. I
learned something too: that the mystery of this remarkable family
(and possibly of all families) is that each birth, each repetition
with a difference, is the rebirth of the whole."
-Roo Borson
"Here is a journey made with a keen-eyed guide through almost
unbearable territories of love. I was caught up by how much story
this journey holds, the tension of wondering how it might end, but
Fiona Lam takes us lightly over "the barbed wire artfully/ braided
into the hedges" to the relief (may I give this much away?) of a
place "where everything tight releases its grip/ and breathes." So
did I -- I turned right around and started reading again, for the
pleasure of the craft and the intimacy of the journey."
-Kate Braid
". . .an overriding sensation of balancing light and dark, of a
voice not only finding its place in form, but of testing the limits
of painful and intimate territory with candidness and poise. In
subject matter, the family reigns supreme. Poems to a grandmother,
mother and siblings are standard fare in first collections, but Lam
moves beyond simple tributes and accusations to carve her versions
with all the scalpel precision [Rita] Wong extols. In "Doctor's
Widow" we see a marriage Lam characterizes as an experiment in
airlessness; in "The Hyphenated," "Father's Day," and "Learning
Chinese," the schizophrenia of cultural assimilation: "We learned
how a mouth is a square/with a hollow inside; two trees make a
forest;/ the sun and the moon side by side/ can be bright as a
mind; peace/ is a woman under the roof of a home." Delving into
questions of identity and aging, Lam constructs a cyclical
narrative, with characters that appear in the negative only to
reappear later demanding understanding: "Then, the flesh withered
and soft/ as an old quilt. Fine skin loose/ around a body becoming/
unfamiliar to itself ("Maternal Archaeology"). This deft
manipulation is what energizes Lam's work, yet it is when she
ventures into the raw territory of the narrator's own relationships
and marriage that a real understanding of life's ironies surface.
Histories repeat themselves, and at her most powerful Lam
resurrects a potent contemplation of familial mistakes, now
revisited. . . Intimate Distances is a homage to relationships in
all their passion and dysfunctionality. I look forward to the
future bringing more of this writer's work."
-Shannon Cowan
Arc Magazine
"Lam's voice has a mature, cured quality that is devoid of
pretension. She communicates intensity without overstatement, and
you can feel the proximity between your life and her words. If I
were to have a hyphenated string of adjectives to describe me, I
doubt I'd share any terms with Fiona Tinwei Lam. At the same time,
I feel remarkably comfortable with her poetry. This book gets a
respectful grunt of approval from me, and I have a strange feeling
that getting into her poetry now may give you bragging rights
later."
-The Ubyssey
"Fiona Tinwei Lam deals with the question of societal roles and how
to play them . . . You go with her on a search for appropriate
rituals to mark the sudden beauty and pain of family life. The
poems talk about togetherness as they pound each other apart . . .
You realize that this is where Lam does her best writing: in the
domestic space, the constriction of marriage, the sensuous beauty
of parenting and its attendant frustrations. You see the emotional
strength required just to get through the poetic day."
-Jacqueline Turner
The Georgia Straight, January 2-9, 2003
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