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Tumour
In her seventh book of poetry, Evelyn Lau digs up her deepest fears to unearth the universal hope we all have ? of a life that matters. Tumour's power lies in Lau's ability to talk about the things we don't like to talk about, the things we avoid with lotions and potions and self-medication. Tumour compels sober self-reflection and shining light into the corners of the mind. In the book's first part, Lau roots through the forces of life that shaped her ? the family legacy, the cultural inheritance. The second part parses how these histories sculpt the present. The rose-coloured glasses of youth are replaced with the lenses of middle age, which sharpen the world's edges. With trenchant observations and unparalleled imagery, Tumour
- GenresPoetry
80 pages, Paperback
First published August 31, 2015
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24 people want to read
About the author
Evelyn Lau
23 books78 followersEvelyn Lau was born July 2, 1971 in Vancouver, British Columbia to Chinese-Canadian parents, who intended for her to eventually become a doctor. Her parents' ambitions for her were wholly irreconcilable with her own; consequently, her home and school lives were desperately unhappy. In 1986 she ran away from her unbearable existence as a pariah in school and tyrannized daughter at home.
Lau began publishing poetry at the age of 12; her creative efforts helped her escape the pressure of home and school. In 1985, at age 14, Lau left home and spent the next several years living itinerantly in Vancouver as a homeless person, sleeping mainly in shelters, friends' homes and on the street and often supporting herself by selling her body to much older men.
Despite the chaos of her first two years' independence she submitted a great deal of poetry to journals and received some recognition. A diary she kept at the time was published in 1989 as Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid. The book was a critical and commercial success. Topics and individuals discussed in the book include some of Lau's various relationships with manipulative older men, the life and habits of a group of anarchists with whom she stayed immediately after leaving home, Lau's experiences with a couple from Boston who smuggled her into the United States, her abuse of various drugs, and her relationship with British Columbia's child support services. The film The Diary of Evelyn Lau (1993) starred Korean-Canadian actress Sandra Oh.
Lau had a well-publicized romantic relationship with University of Victoria creative writing professor and author W. P. Kinsella which led to the filing of a libel case against her[3]. She currently lives in Vancouver, where she freelances as a manuscript consultant in Simon Fraser University's Writing and Publishing Program. For invitations to poetry readings and festivals, the author may be contacted through Oolichan Books.
Lau began publishing poetry at the age of 12; her creative efforts helped her escape the pressure of home and school. In 1985, at age 14, Lau left home and spent the next several years living itinerantly in Vancouver as a homeless person, sleeping mainly in shelters, friends' homes and on the street and often supporting herself by selling her body to much older men.
Despite the chaos of her first two years' independence she submitted a great deal of poetry to journals and received some recognition. A diary she kept at the time was published in 1989 as Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid. The book was a critical and commercial success. Topics and individuals discussed in the book include some of Lau's various relationships with manipulative older men, the life and habits of a group of anarchists with whom she stayed immediately after leaving home, Lau's experiences with a couple from Boston who smuggled her into the United States, her abuse of various drugs, and her relationship with British Columbia's child support services. The film The Diary of Evelyn Lau (1993) starred Korean-Canadian actress Sandra Oh.
Lau had a well-publicized romantic relationship with University of Victoria creative writing professor and author W. P. Kinsella which led to the filing of a libel case against her[3]. She currently lives in Vancouver, where she freelances as a manuscript consultant in Simon Fraser University's Writing and Publishing Program. For invitations to poetry readings and festivals, the author may be contacted through Oolichan Books.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
December 20, 2024
Evelyn Lau has a way of speaking directly to my soul, at once understanding it and taking it by surprise with the clarity of her revelations.
May 29, 2022
The bruise coloured body I lowered
Into the porcelain bath
Wasn’t mine any longer.
It looked like a field of blue flowers.
Every poem in this collection is written with consummate skill and genius. Even more impressive though is the depth of originality in many of the poems. Perfection of a kind is relatively easy to attain through adherence to a model, one need only develop mastery in a craft by devotedly absorbing the work of others. Likewise, originality by itself is a trivial achievement; the superficially novel can be invented simply through pattern recognition and an identification of gaps in the established order. That kind of originality however is like someone just filling in the unknown elements predicted by a scientific periodic table. Profound originality conversely awakens to the fundamental and obtains insights from this that instantaneously transform observed chaos into order. Genius is precisely that which simultaneously penetrates and encompasses reality in such a manner. And Lau’s genius is provided here in a smorgasbord of beautiful epiphanies and ordinary moments.
Lau in fact shows us how a genuinely poetic affinity improves the human condition, transforming everything about the world into an artistic experience. Many people think of art as the province of museums and galleries, limited to a distinct selection of objects – artefacts. To be awakened by poetry though is to perceive everything around us with vivid clarity and vitality. Poetry brings the earth to life. Even the dead and other inanimate things are made alive by it; and reading great poetry is always an alchemical alteration of the self. Of course this will be in direct proportion to the amount of honesty the individual invests in seeing. And here Lau confronts the worst of human nature and the wounds of life with unflinching truthfulness. Nowhere is this more clearly demonstrated than in the paired poems “Nothing Happened” and “Something Happened” where the author recounts two traumatic incidents from her childhood. What distinguishes the poetry in both of these pieces is the virtuosity with which the beautiful and grotesque are interweaved; the sublime and tragic fused together. Personal suffering of course has a great deal of social currency nowadays but too often the realities of human pain and sadness are desecrated through crass instrumentalization. It means something else however to honestly confront evil, to conquer ugliness with truth. And this is what Lau does. Through meticulous and finely cultivated powers of observation, the author imbues the details of daily life with all the richness that conscience and attention can provide. Her poems highlight just how different the visible and the apparent are; because what she does is make the visible truly apparent to the reader.
If I might be indulged a comparison, I find that, among her historical predecessors, her best work most closely parallels the best work of Andrew Marvell. There’s a comparable depth in the harmonization of heterogeneous elements between them as well as the use of visceral sensuality to achieve remarkable effect; all of which occurs however within the parameters of dominating intellect so, admittedly, there is a persistence of control here suggesting a shared limitation between both these poets too. Not that there’s anything academic in the derogatory sense about the poems; although the air of deliberation and circumspection prevails throughout, this is balanced by an equal sharpness of sensibility. How the tension between these two elements uncoils itself in Lau’s work is also of special interest and we see it manifest in the astute social criticism and moral auditing of bourgeois life from an apathetic member of their own ranks; poems like “California Beach Town” and “Remembrance Day” being notable instances. Like all great poets, Evelyn Lau has the prerequisite independence of personality needed to see the world anew, to veer off the trodden down paths of common perspective and draw newfound refreshment from the hidden springs of primeval truth. A rare ability in any era and one that seems to be gradually disappearing in the present age.
the structure of bones beneath
rising a little more to the surface each year,
like a drowned corpse floating
to the lip of a lake.
Poetry, however much it has become trivialized, remains an essential historical art form, documenting the human soul in a way that no other can. Even lyrical music, whether popular or subcultural, is complicated by social trends and performative ambitions in a way that poetry isn’t; nothing like poetry can ooze its way into the private sanctums of our thoughts. Poets like John Keats, Anne Sexton, and yes, Evelyn Lau, herald the torch of uncompromising individuality. They preserve the essence of what it means to experience life in radical subjectivity, as a personal predicament imposing demands on the entire breadth of the self. And to read them is to be reinvigorated in what is most important in our own lives.
January 26, 2022
All I wanted was the small grace
of sleep, that swift darkening.
But Ativan led me through the dream gates
to the childhood house on Cambridge Street -
the bang of the metal mailbox,
the lurch of the key in the lock,
the sweaty sheen of linoleum.
Shoes lined against the wall in a mad precision.
My stomach flip-flopped in fear -
somewhere in the house, the mother,
like an escaped tarantula. I am shrieking
in my sleep, a horror film with the sound
turned down, the milk duvet an avalanche
stuffing ears and nostrils with snow,
the scrap-metal sky a dun glow, fading.
Finally, words shatter the surface:
You didn't protect me -
the indignant wail of a four-year-old
choked out in a thick-tongued mumble,
a rasp into the sour breath of the pillow.
Would you believe it?
In a few months I'll be forty.
* * *
The trees screening my room
from the street are in bloom again,
scribbled with green. Broken crockery
in the soil, the ragged paint daubs
of daffodils. Cherry blossoms
clogging the gutters.
Twenty years I've been eyeing
this shrub outside my window,
watching it grow an inch a year,
its branches candled with cones.
Where does anyone go from here?
Today two workmen levitating
in a crane above the downtown street
removed the hands from the clock face
above the intersection. Now the gold circle
is complete, hovering like a harvest moon
above the tower called Eden.
The hour evaporate, the thawed days.
Seagulls sail past the highrises,
ancient as pterodactyls.
The old crows watch from the wires -
* * *
The indignity of seeing you change,
even you. Your lips used to be springy
to the touch, a miniature trampoline,
a little fat cushion of flesh. It seems someone
let all the stuffing out. Now the inner labia,
once so tidy and trim, are stretched
and distended, and sometimes poke out
like the tip of a tongue in a cruel tease.
That's all you want me to say about you.
Lately you've grown reticent as a maiden aunt
in your middle age, desiring flannel nightgowns
and ten o'clock bedtimes. So open to proposition
in your prime, it won't be long before
you grow a white fur, prepare for hibernation.
* * *
Little omen, little cloud on the hrizon.
Shiver and shimmer in my sight-line -
electrical malfunction, lightning bolt
out of the clear sky. Shaped like a zigzag
and brighter than white, quicksilver sly,
you dart here and there in my vision field.
The countdown begins, in a shower
of platinum particles. It's part
and parcel of the migraine aura -
sounds and smells amplifying
until a squeeze, or a squirt of hand lotion,
launches the tippy boats of nausea.
Then it comes. I can hear it marching
in the distance, rolling in -
advancing army, cresting wave,
even metaphors can't keep it at bay.
I want to say, With the force of an avalanche.
To say, Like staring at an eclipse.
Dear Migraine, I can see you now,
peeking at me from the far hill,
through the dark stand of trees.
of sleep, that swift darkening.
But Ativan led me through the dream gates
to the childhood house on Cambridge Street -
the bang of the metal mailbox,
the lurch of the key in the lock,
the sweaty sheen of linoleum.
Shoes lined against the wall in a mad precision.
My stomach flip-flopped in fear -
somewhere in the house, the mother,
like an escaped tarantula. I am shrieking
in my sleep, a horror film with the sound
turned down, the milk duvet an avalanche
stuffing ears and nostrils with snow,
the scrap-metal sky a dun glow, fading.
Finally, words shatter the surface:
You didn't protect me -
the indignant wail of a four-year-old
choked out in a thick-tongued mumble,
a rasp into the sour breath of the pillow.
Would you believe it?
In a few months I'll be forty.
- Ancient History, pg. 11
* * *
The trees screening my room
from the street are in bloom again,
scribbled with green. Broken crockery
in the soil, the ragged paint daubs
of daffodils. Cherry blossoms
clogging the gutters.
Twenty years I've been eyeing
this shrub outside my window,
watching it grow an inch a year,
its branches candled with cones.
Where does anyone go from here?
Today two workmen levitating
in a crane above the downtown street
removed the hands from the clock face
above the intersection. Now the gold circle
is complete, hovering like a harvest moon
above the tower called Eden.
The hour evaporate, the thawed days.
Seagulls sail past the highrises,
ancient as pterodactyls.
The old crows watch from the wires -
- Window View, Spring, pg. 35
* * *
The indignity of seeing you change,
even you. Your lips used to be springy
to the touch, a miniature trampoline,
a little fat cushion of flesh. It seems someone
let all the stuffing out. Now the inner labia,
once so tidy and trim, are stretched
and distended, and sometimes poke out
like the tip of a tongue in a cruel tease.
That's all you want me to say about you.
Lately you've grown reticent as a maiden aunt
in your middle age, desiring flannel nightgowns
and ten o'clock bedtimes. So open to proposition
in your prime, it won't be long before
you grow a white fur, prepare for hibernation.
- Vagina, pg. 69
* * *
Little omen, little cloud on the hrizon.
Shiver and shimmer in my sight-line -
electrical malfunction, lightning bolt
out of the clear sky. Shaped like a zigzag
and brighter than white, quicksilver sly,
you dart here and there in my vision field.
The countdown begins, in a shower
of platinum particles. It's part
and parcel of the migraine aura -
sounds and smells amplifying
until a squeeze, or a squirt of hand lotion,
launches the tippy boats of nausea.
Then it comes. I can hear it marching
in the distance, rolling in -
advancing army, cresting wave,
even metaphors can't keep it at bay.
I want to say, With the force of an avalanche.
To say, Like staring at an eclipse.
Dear Migraine, I can see you now,
peeking at me from the far hill,
through the dark stand of trees.
- Aura, pg. 79
September 15, 2018
4.5
Evelyn Lau's poetry books are best taken as a whole, each poem joining together to create a portrait of the author, a winding stream of the speaker's many lives. Many of these poems were meaningful to me as part of the whole, more than as pieces all their own. It is a poignant gift to receive these words into myself, to be allowed this exploration of Lau's experiences and the way her mind and body have taken in and released them. The third of the author's poetry collections that I've read (after Treble in 2015(?) and Oedipal Dreams last year), Tumour has her consistent honesty, spirit, and basis in narrative instance, but with a new approach to memory through distance, of aging, of family (especially of mothers and aunts) and poetry community, and moments of hurt that remain and are still within her. A culmination, a continued growth, of all that's come before; and a dark, moving, wonderful read.
Though I'd recommend the whole, as a whole, here are the pieces that I liked best in their own spaces:
Ancient History*
Alarm
Nothing Happened
Something Happened*
Motion Sickness
The Shrine
Fogged*
Window View, Spring
Good-bye, Santa Monica
Hong Kong
Past Life
-
Life on Mars
[The body series!] Face, Skin, Brain, Gallbladder, Vagina
Saved
Summerland Redux
Evelyn Lau's poetry books are best taken as a whole, each poem joining together to create a portrait of the author, a winding stream of the speaker's many lives. Many of these poems were meaningful to me as part of the whole, more than as pieces all their own. It is a poignant gift to receive these words into myself, to be allowed this exploration of Lau's experiences and the way her mind and body have taken in and released them. The third of the author's poetry collections that I've read (after Treble in 2015(?) and Oedipal Dreams last year), Tumour has her consistent honesty, spirit, and basis in narrative instance, but with a new approach to memory through distance, of aging, of family (especially of mothers and aunts) and poetry community, and moments of hurt that remain and are still within her. A culmination, a continued growth, of all that's come before; and a dark, moving, wonderful read.
Though I'd recommend the whole, as a whole, here are the pieces that I liked best in their own spaces:
Ancient History*
Alarm
Nothing Happened
Something Happened*
Motion Sickness
The Shrine
Fogged*
Window View, Spring
Good-bye, Santa Monica
Hong Kong
Past Life
-
Life on Mars
[The body series!] Face, Skin, Brain, Gallbladder, Vagina
Saved
Summerland Redux
December 9, 2016
Lau's poems capture an adult's confrontation with the past and with the present--the changing body, the changing mind, the dying friends. And how these things then beg us to rewrite the past. But more than their content, these poems are about the language and the poetic line. Lau is a terrific craftsperson, and these poems are a tour d'force.
June 28, 2017
I've loved everything Evelyn Lau has ever written. Her poetry is as beautiful as it is real. It's unpretentious. I would recommend reading any of her books... they are amazing.
December 2, 2019
i got this from a book sale for 2 bucks. it made me cry several times. i'd say it's more than worth it and i'm glad to have found it
June 5, 2025
I love that Evelyn tackles topics that are deep, dark, complex and incredibly human. I wanted to tear through every poem but forced myself to slow down and savour a few poems each day 🐌
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews