Days When I Hide My Corpse in a Cardboard Box: Selected Poems of Natalia Chan

by Lok Fung, Eleanor Goodman (Translator)

Lok Fung explores the political, linguistic and cultural tensions of being both from Hong Kong and a feminist in her first major bilingual collection in English. A prolific poet and critic, she writes in Cantonese, sprinkling her work with pop culture references, and engaging directly with the current turmoil in Hong Kong (and broader Chinese) politics and society, as well as the shifting interventions with the international community. Fung is best known for her award-winning Chinese collection Flying Coffin . Her interests include cultural and film theory, gender studies, popular culture, performance studies, cross-dressing and fashion.

Genres: Poetry

144 pages, Paperback

First published February 9, 2016

About the author

Lok Fung (Luo Feng) is the pseudonym of Natalia S.H. Chan, an assistant professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong's Department of Cultural and Religious Studies.

Reviews

[Greg Bem · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beneath the layers of casual tones and cinematic imagery lies a sense of with and dreadfully hilarious scathing. These poems hold multiple folds of meaning in their acute translation, and caused me to double-check myself and my instinctual approach to reading again and again.

[Hollis · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this collection you'll find reflections on the cultural, historical significance of Hong Kong as a lived-in place, how technology frames our connections (both romantic and otherwise), and many attempts to bridge the mystical with that of the urban. Some of my favorites include "Spirit Dance," "Solo Dance of a Low Cello," "Choreography for a Pinned and Wriggling Moth," "The Bottled Dance of a Lost City," "Two Adams," "When the City Gets Old," "A Poem of Mong Kok," "Days When I Hide My Corpse in a Cardboard Box," "The Color of My Name," and "October in the City: A Book of Amnesia." From the titles alone, you can see the repeated emphasis on writing the significance of various places and times within a city, all that the term might suggest, as well as some emphasis on the technology and method of dance.

"'Take the dance home!' You say this before we part
I put the speech of glass into a bottle.
when it moves let it clap and beat
when it's still let it solidify into a body
then let it rove from every starting point at the city limits
in a circle in two squares in countless polygons
put it on a bench or beside a round pond or in a shapeless wasteland
and when it is speechless let it pierce the forest of cars
the ocean of buses the flight-paths of overpasses
straight to the middle where there's nowhere left to go
before the bottle opens and lets the dance out
and returns a mime's mask to you and an unfinishable poem
and inside it will be my last will and testament"

The lines are long, and sometimes, no doubt an impact of translation, lack identifiable rhythm, but her efforts spill over with the richness of surreal imagery and emotional precision.

[Cody Stetzel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this book was very multifaceted. In some parts, it felt like the book was trying to explore the relationship of human-human through the internet, but accomplishing this exploration in a bit of an outdated fashion? I'm not sure how to explain that more clearly.

What I loved about this book were the moments that completely surprise and overtook me. Often there were poems, which, after a few meandering pieces, would appear like lightning in a dark night.

I'd certainly give this author another read.

[Shannon]

faves:
- Angry Ghost
- A Shadow Dance of Red Cheeks
- The Lamplight Tonight is Stunning
- The Loving Wind and SARS
- When the City Gets Old (absolute favorite)
- My Mom and the Black Cat
- October in the City: A Book of Amnesia

[Hillary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fun poems! My favorite was "Love Letter to a Computer."