'These poems are the work of thirty years. When I was raising children, poetry was my furtive "sometimes" habit. It seems a miracle to me that I wrote anything at all during that time, but something kept drawing me back to words. It was a way of stopping to take notice of the beauty around me. It was a way to process what was happening: the surprise of loss, and grief. It was a way to keep things, to make them mine. It was a way to share things, to give them to others. Poetry is a kind of work, but it is also a kind of play: a playful work, a working play. I have learned to "let myself" play (as Julia Cameron puts it). Part of the play is dress-ups, trying on different poetic forms: here's the hair-lacquered-into-place-immaculately-ball-gowned villanelle, here's the smart-casual-dressed-for-inner-city-café free verse, here's the so-laid-back-I'm-practically-horizontal prose poem. I am inspired in my play by watching other poets do it. To playfully quote Alvin Pang from "What Happened": "It was vehement. It was egregious. It was somehow / necessary. Accessory."' (Publication summary)
'Miriam Wei Wei Lo's second poetry collection explores motherhood, immigration, religion and the creative life.'
(Introduction)
'Miriam Wei Wei Lo’s Who Comes Calling? begins with an open hand of a poem, its structure mimicking five uncurling fingers numbering off the things which Australia means to the persona, as a girl growing up in Singapore with family in Australia.' (Introduction)
'Miriam Wei Wei Lo’s Who Comes Calling? begins with an open hand of a poem, its structure mimicking five uncurling fingers numbering off the things which Australia means to the persona, as a girl growing up in Singapore with family in Australia.' (Introduction)
(Introduction)
'Miriam Wei Wei Lo's second poetry collection explores motherhood, immigration, religion and the creative life.'
