'Following on from the groundbreaking Argosy, Li's second collection Lost Lake ups the ante, taking the reader and literature alike into new reaches and realms of the imagination. Lost Lake, which exhibits Li’s distinctive use of text and image, consists of eight extended sequences of poetry, collage and photography, on subjects ranging from Dante’s Inferno and Steve Reich’s Different Trains, to the tomb of Newton and the archives of artist and autodidact Joseph Cornell. Through the eight sequences of Lost Lake, geography and music, history and architecture, works of art and literature, encounter each other in striking and unexpected ways, generating new hybrid objects. Lost Lake disassembles boundaries and challenges expectations of what a work of literature can be—its alchemy blooms in the spaces between eras, genres and forms.' (Publication summary)
'A publishing highlight of 2017 was the appearance of Bella Li’s Argosy, and this has been followed by the recent release of Lost Lake. By introducing an intriguing blend of collage, photography and sparely-written text, the poet has provoked, as well as enthralling us with her original poetics, a fresh way of looking back on some poetic traditions, particularly that of Surrealism. Although a number of responses present themselves for discussion, I shall focus on what is a dominant focus in both collections, that of the journey. With the theme of voyages or journeys reverberating through Argosy and Lost Lake, they reveal themselves as an imminence, in which all images and words surrender into an inevitable beauty.' (Introduction)
'A publishing highlight of 2017 was the appearance of Bella Li’s Argosy, and this has been followed by the recent release of Lost Lake. By introducing an intriguing blend of collage, photography and sparely-written text, the poet has provoked, as well as enthralling us with her original poetics, a fresh way of looking back on some poetic traditions, particularly that of Surrealism. Although a number of responses present themselves for discussion, I shall focus on what is a dominant focus in both collections, that of the journey. With the theme of voyages or journeys reverberating through Argosy and Lost Lake, they reveal themselves as an imminence, in which all images and words surrender into an inevitable beauty.' (Introduction)
