Rainforest

by Eileen Chong

Rainforest is Chong’s most realised collection to date, comprising 52 poems divided into four sections: East, South, West, and North (the order of the cardinal directions in the Chinese language). Chong skilfully uses imagery of water and forests, among other elements, to navigate a personal history of her past, present, and future.

Genres: Poetry

81 pages, Paperback

Published May 1, 2018

About the author

Eileen Chong was born in 1980, in Singapore. She moved to Sydney, Australia in 2007.

She won the Poets Union Youth Fellowship in 2010 and was an Australian Poetry Fellow for 2011-2012.

She was the poet-in-residence at the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney and the Bundanon Trust in 2016.

Her poetry collections are Burning Rice (2012), Peony (2014), Painting Red Orchids (2016), and Rainforest (2018), all from Pitt Street Poetry, Sydney.

Chong writes about food, family, migration, love and loss. The Singaporean-Australian poet Boey Kim Cheng has said that ‘Chong’s work offers a poetry of feeling, rendered in luminous detail and language, alive to the sorrows and joys of daily living.’

Awards & Achievements

Her books have been shortlisted for numerous awards, including the Anne Elder Award 2012 for a first book, the Australian Arts in Asia Award 2013, the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award 2017, and the Australian Prime Minister’s Literary Award 2013 and 2017.

Prizes individual poems of Chong’s have shortlisted for include the Ron Pretty Prize 2014, the Newcastle Poetry Prize 2016, and the Australian Book Review‘s Peter Porter Poetry Prize 2015 and 2017. She also longlisted for the University of Canberra’s Vice-Chancellor Award 2014, 2015 and 2016. Her poems are widely anthologised in Australian and international anthologies.

Reviews

[Olivia-Savannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

This poetry collection was good. It just wasn’t my style of poetry – and the style of poetry that works for one person won’t for another. I liked the poems which were focused on family, or the ones which talked a bout a fusion of identity. Eileen was born in Singapore, has Chinese heritage, and studied and lives in Australia. Similarly, I was born in England, with Jamaican heritage, and grew up in the Netherlands. I could relate to her poems about identity for that reason.

Chong uses short sentences a lot, making her poems precise and very direct. I felt like there was no deeper meaning for me to pry into, which is one of my favourite things to do when reading poetry. But for fans of insta poetry or beginners to poetry, her style of poetry is going to be much better suited. I think the short lines worked for the flow and rhythms of her poems.

[Ailyn Shi · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is poetry that touches on home, belongingness, and that guilt and identity struggle you can only get as a Singaporean in Australia who eventually migrated to the West (or the North?). Rainforest is divided into four cardinal sections: each speaking about an era in Eileen’s life and mirroring the distance she travels and her keen observations of her new surroundings and thoughts about home, as she migrates from one continent to another.

The imagery is very rich and subtly woven in, especially the poems about family, traditions, and filial obligations (e.g. herbal chicken broth and steamed crabs; Autumn lanterns and tea that smells of bamboo): East might be my favorite of the four sections, as it evokes the nostalgia I have for my childhood. The last two sections speak of home, love, loss, and melancholy poignantly, and still with that sense of bittersweet contentment and gratitude at having crossed borders and embraced a new life.

All in all, 3.5 stars out of 5. This is a lovely collection of poems that both celebrate and mourn the consequences of migration and identity loss; that speak to the fluidity of “home” as history and place and person all at once; the imagery being rich, but the style of poetry-writing being a bit too short and direct for my liking (everything laid out, nothing further to parse beneath the lines). Still, a very enjoyable and recommended read.

[James Whitmore · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Chinese character on the cover of this poetry collection, Eileen Chong explains in an author's note at the end, is "lín", part of her Chinese name and her personal name. It means a "constant, gentle, nourishing rain", but its components (or radicals) refer to rain drops, her mother's maiden name, and wood. Rainforest, then, "is embodied within the word itself". It's a fitting statement for a collection of the many things that can be embodied in words. The title poem, which opens the collections, speaks of "my namesake, so greatly desired". Perhaps alluding to the battles fought over resources in south east Asia - teak, rubber - Chong writes that "men set fire to a thousand ships", reminding me of the war fought over Helen in The Iliad, the face that launched the Greek army. So there is conflict embodied in this word too. Read more on my blog.

[Gemma Mahadeo · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5

[Niki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really pretty imagery