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Flèche
Flèche (the French word for 'arrow') is an offensive technique commonly used in fencing, a sport of Mary Jean Chan's young adult years, when she competed locally and internationally for her home city, Hong Kong. This cross-linguistic pun presents the queer, non-white body as both vulnerable ('flesh') and weaponised ('flèche'), and evokes the difficulties of reconciling one's need for safety alongside the desire to shed one's protective armour in order to fully embrace the world.
Central to the collection is the figure of the poet's mother, whose fragmented memories of political turmoil in twentieth-century China are sensitively threaded through the book in an eight-part poetic sequence, combined with recollections from Chan's childhood. As complex themes of multilingualism, queerness, psychoanalysis and cultural history emerge, so too does a richly imagined personal, maternal and national biography. The result is a series of poems that feel urgent and true, dazzling and devastating by turns.
Central to the collection is the figure of the poet's mother, whose fragmented memories of political turmoil in twentieth-century China are sensitively threaded through the book in an eight-part poetic sequence, combined with recollections from Chan's childhood. As complex themes of multilingualism, queerness, psychoanalysis and cultural history emerge, so too does a richly imagined personal, maternal and national biography. The result is a series of poems that feel urgent and true, dazzling and devastating by turns.
78 pages, Paperback
First published July 2, 2019
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2975 people want to read
About the author
Mary Jean Chan
9 books80 followersMary Jean Chan is a Chinese-British poet, lecturer and editor. Her first poetry collection, Flèche, won the 2019 Costa Book Award in the Poetry category. She was also a recipient of the 2019 Eric Gregory Award for a collection by poets under the age of 30. Chan is a Ledbury Poetry Critic and co-editor of Oxford Poetry. She currently lives in London, and is Lecturer in Creative Writing (Poetry) at Oxford Brookes University.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 212 reviews
June 18, 2021
When I say mother I mean
all those mothers I have
witnessed or envisioned
mothers of history and
mothers of our present
historical moment all
desperately trying to love
their children even those
the laws have deemed as
unworthy as washcloths
tumble-dried for the last
time dirt-ridden beyond help"
This was such a powerful collection, detailing the poet's personal history and her struggle with other's acceptance of her body, her queerness, and her family's history. Fleche, a fencing term and also a word which resonates with echoes of the body's flesh, incorporates timeless themes into these personal anecdotes and I appreciated the insight to a culture and a person I have the deepest respect for.
all those mothers I have
witnessed or envisioned
mothers of history and
mothers of our present
historical moment all
desperately trying to love
their children even those
the laws have deemed as
unworthy as washcloths
tumble-dried for the last
time dirt-ridden beyond help"
This was such a powerful collection, detailing the poet's personal history and her struggle with other's acceptance of her body, her queerness, and her family's history. Fleche, a fencing term and also a word which resonates with echoes of the body's flesh, incorporates timeless themes into these personal anecdotes and I appreciated the insight to a culture and a person I have the deepest respect for.
February 24, 2020
Great poetry collection dealing mainly with her relationship with her mother and how it is strained due to her sexuality. These are very accessible poems centered around fencing terms as an analogy for how she and her mother interact.
January 27, 2020
“Flèche”, the title of Mary Jean Chan’s poetry collection, means an aggressive offensive fencing technique and the author refers to her experience participating in the sport throughout several pieces. This central metaphor describes her process of literally arming herself in combat, but also poignantly suggests how she must battle against her identity being suppressed especially in white and non-queer spaces. The preface of this book points out that “We are defined against something, by what we are not and will never be.” The way in which the author must assert herself in opposition to this persistent and pernicious act of being characterized as what she is not is dynamically explored throughout these poems.
Read my full review of Flèche by Mary Jean Chan on LonesomeReader
Read my full review of Flèche by Mary Jean Chan on LonesomeReader
September 13, 2025
Wonderful debut poetry collection by a young, queer Chinese-British poet. Cleverly structured around her teenage fencing hobby, which offers the opportunity to explore themes of conflict and intimacy, it also examines her complicated relationship with her mother, her Chinese/Hong Kong roots, language, and colonialism. I very fortunately happened to also be reading graphic memoir Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir at the same time, which explores many similar themes - but I do love how poetry can bring in so many layers while maintaining a certain lightness of touch and ambiguity, saying so much in just a few lines. I want to look out for her subsequent books as well. 4.5.
poet says: behave, moonbeam
mother says: the way you ask the moon
to behave is transgressive, not Chinese
poet says: my voice is a splinter
poet says: behave, moonbeam
mother says: the way you ask the moon
to behave is transgressive, not Chinese
poet says: my voice is a splinter
May 1, 2021
"I would like to live like the trees
my lover often says look up!
as she admires a canopy of green
her tree-like behaviour astounds me
if you looked within me now, you'd see
that my languages are like roots
gnarled in soil, one and indivisible
except the world divides me endlessly
some days I dare not look at the trees
they are such hopefully creatures
if the legislators of our world
looked to their trees for guidance
would they reconsider everything?
lately I've been trying to write
a poem that might birth a tree
a genuine acceptance or self
continues to elude me"
// Wish
Flèche has been on my TBR for quite a while so I was happy to finally read it. Chan thinks of the collection as a book of love poems: it encompasses self-love towards herself as a queer person, filial love towards her mother who is finding it hard to come to terms with Chan's sexuality, romantic love directed at a partner or lover. Identity, self-fashioning, and perception are at the centre of these poems.
It is a collection that explores hyphenation, the embodiment of multiplicity, the moulding of self to fit different audiences, a constant negotiation with mind, body, and the world. Also threaded through are concerns of nationality as well as ethnicity, being Chinese outside of China and reckoning with a turbulent 20th-century history. Fencing here provides a way in, a tool to examine personhood amidst cultural clash and warring traditions. Deeply intimate, one feels almost like an intruder, coming upon intensely private moments and personal realizations.
my lover often says look up!
as she admires a canopy of green
her tree-like behaviour astounds me
if you looked within me now, you'd see
that my languages are like roots
gnarled in soil, one and indivisible
except the world divides me endlessly
some days I dare not look at the trees
they are such hopefully creatures
if the legislators of our world
looked to their trees for guidance
would they reconsider everything?
lately I've been trying to write
a poem that might birth a tree
a genuine acceptance or self
continues to elude me"
// Wish
Flèche has been on my TBR for quite a while so I was happy to finally read it. Chan thinks of the collection as a book of love poems: it encompasses self-love towards herself as a queer person, filial love towards her mother who is finding it hard to come to terms with Chan's sexuality, romantic love directed at a partner or lover. Identity, self-fashioning, and perception are at the centre of these poems.
It is a collection that explores hyphenation, the embodiment of multiplicity, the moulding of self to fit different audiences, a constant negotiation with mind, body, and the world. Also threaded through are concerns of nationality as well as ethnicity, being Chinese outside of China and reckoning with a turbulent 20th-century history. Fencing here provides a way in, a tool to examine personhood amidst cultural clash and warring traditions. Deeply intimate, one feels almost like an intruder, coming upon intensely private moments and personal realizations.
December 24, 2019
Exquisite poems of love and longing, with the speaker’s loyalties always split between head and heart, flesh and spirit. Over it all presides the figure of a mother – not just Chan’s mother, who had difficulty accepting that her daughter was a lesbian, but also the relationship to the mother tongue (Chinese) and the mother country (Hong Kong). In form the poems range from prose paragraphs to aphoristic lines, and from stanzas to columns. Fencing terms are used for structure. I was impressed by how clearly Chan sees how others perceive her, and by how generously she is able to imagine herself into her mother’s experience. I’ve read 3.5 of the 4 nominees now and this is my pick to win the Costa Award.
Favorite lines: “my languages are like roots / gnarled in soil, one and indivisible / except the world divides me endlessly / some days I dare not look at the trees / they are such hopeful creatures”
Favorite lines: “my languages are like roots / gnarled in soil, one and indivisible / except the world divides me endlessly / some days I dare not look at the trees / they are such hopeful creatures”
February 18, 2020
4.5 stars.
“Once in a lifetime, you will gesture
at an open window, tell the one who
detests the queerness in your that dead
daughters do not disappoint, free your
sore knees from inching towards a kind
of reprieve, declare yourself genderless as
hawk or sparrow: an encumbered body
let loose from its cage. You will refuse your mother’s rage, her spit, her tongue
heavy like the heaviest of stones. Her
anger is like the sun, which is like love,
which is the easiest thing, even on the
hardest of days. You will linger, knowing
that this standing before an open window
is what the living do: that they sometimes
reconsider at the slightest touch of grace.”
- The Window, Mary Jean Chan
From the moment I flipped this book open and read the preface, I knew I would love this. It spoke to me right away: how we are defined, our preconceptions, being multilingual. This: “There are many reasons for my writing in your language. Ask your government, ask mine.” Oof, talk about throwing in the punches right away. “This is a book of love poems”, says Mary Jean Chan, who was born in Hong Kong and studied in England. Her mother was originally from Shanghai, before the Cultural Revolution gutted her family and took her father’s life.
This collection, the title ‘Flèche’ sourced from a fencing term informs the collection’s three-part framework (Parry, Riposte, Corps-À-Corps), these being book-ended by an influential presence in the form of mother. Sections are preceded by ‘mother’s fables’ - sometimes this is in the poet’s POV referring to her own mother, sometimes these are stories and memories belonging to her mother, sometimes these are a chorus of collective mothers across time, bearing witness to multiple tragedies: ”all those mothers I have / witnessed or envisioned / mothers of history and / mothers of our present [...] all desperately trying to love their children”.
Flèche cleverly experiments with exciting forms and bilingual prose; e.g. // for chopsticks, words written in Chinese characters and wordplay involving a Chinese word shared between Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese dialects. This weaving of language weaves cultures, but also simultaneously invites and excludes speakers and non-speakers, reminiscent of Rose Lu’s ‘All Who Live On Islands”.
Since I’m not a fencer, Flèche instead brings to mind the word Flesh (fyi the title of a poem on pg 16), which seems an apt way to bring together these poems that interrogate identity and reflect on stories. From reckoning with personal identity, queerness (especially in the context of Chinese communities), and interracial relationships, to collective ‘post-colonial’ identities specific to Hong Kong lives who have been caught between Eastern and Western powers. And from personal stories - hers, her mother’s - to collective stories belonging to mothers, to people the world over, across time and history.
“Once in a lifetime, you will gesture
at an open window, tell the one who
detests the queerness in your that dead
daughters do not disappoint, free your
sore knees from inching towards a kind
of reprieve, declare yourself genderless as
hawk or sparrow: an encumbered body
let loose from its cage. You will refuse your mother’s rage, her spit, her tongue
heavy like the heaviest of stones. Her
anger is like the sun, which is like love,
which is the easiest thing, even on the
hardest of days. You will linger, knowing
that this standing before an open window
is what the living do: that they sometimes
reconsider at the slightest touch of grace.”
- The Window, Mary Jean Chan
From the moment I flipped this book open and read the preface, I knew I would love this. It spoke to me right away: how we are defined, our preconceptions, being multilingual. This: “There are many reasons for my writing in your language. Ask your government, ask mine.” Oof, talk about throwing in the punches right away. “This is a book of love poems”, says Mary Jean Chan, who was born in Hong Kong and studied in England. Her mother was originally from Shanghai, before the Cultural Revolution gutted her family and took her father’s life.
This collection, the title ‘Flèche’ sourced from a fencing term informs the collection’s three-part framework (Parry, Riposte, Corps-À-Corps), these being book-ended by an influential presence in the form of mother. Sections are preceded by ‘mother’s fables’ - sometimes this is in the poet’s POV referring to her own mother, sometimes these are stories and memories belonging to her mother, sometimes these are a chorus of collective mothers across time, bearing witness to multiple tragedies: ”all those mothers I have / witnessed or envisioned / mothers of history and / mothers of our present [...] all desperately trying to love their children”.
Flèche cleverly experiments with exciting forms and bilingual prose; e.g. // for chopsticks, words written in Chinese characters and wordplay involving a Chinese word shared between Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese dialects. This weaving of language weaves cultures, but also simultaneously invites and excludes speakers and non-speakers, reminiscent of Rose Lu’s ‘All Who Live On Islands”.
Since I’m not a fencer, Flèche instead brings to mind the word Flesh (fyi the title of a poem on pg 16), which seems an apt way to bring together these poems that interrogate identity and reflect on stories. From reckoning with personal identity, queerness (especially in the context of Chinese communities), and interracial relationships, to collective ‘post-colonial’ identities specific to Hong Kong lives who have been caught between Eastern and Western powers. And from personal stories - hers, her mother’s - to collective stories belonging to mothers, to people the world over, across time and history.
March 19, 2020
Flèche is a moving collection of poems about dislocation, queerness and love. Throughout it all presides the figure of a mother – not just Chan’s mother, who had difficulty accepting that her daughter was a lesbian, but also the relationship to the mother tongue (Chinese) and the mother country (Hong Kong). Chan is bilingual in English and Cantonese, and these poems detail her multilingualism, English as an imperialist tool, and how speaking different languages in different aspects of one's life can create a splitting of the self. To portray this, Chan’s experimental poems interweave Chinese characters that simultaneously invites and excludes speakers and non-speakers. This forceful anthology is also a nuanced and thought-provoking portrait of the relationship between mother and daughter. This collection is at once proudly defiant and self-consciously fragile. Beautiful.
April 7, 2022
A poetry collection about fencing, mother-daughter relationships, queer relationships and the Asian American experience. One to reread and mull over.
This was my favourite poem: https://poems.poetrysociety.org.uk/po...
This was my favourite poem: https://poems.poetrysociety.org.uk/po...
April 16, 2023
3.5 Stars
June 6, 2022
‘Tonight, I forget that I am/ bilingual. I lose my voice in your mouth, kiss till blood/ comes so sorry does not slip on an avalanche of syllables/ into sorrow. I tell you that as long as we hold each other,/ no apology will be enough. Tonight, I am dreaming again/of tomorrow: another chance to eat at the feast of the living/ with chopsticks balanced across the bridges of our hands/ as we imbibe each yes, spit out every no among scraps of/ shell or bone.’
Perhaps if I familiarise myself a bit more with Chan’s literary/poetic style, I might bump this up to a 5 later, but for now I think 4 feels most fitting to me. I read this all at once and very quickly and it felt like chugging an entire mug of hot tea – not so hot that it scalds one’s throat but hot enough to make one surrender one’s full attention powerlessly… yet very willingly. I love the structure of the poems. The ones structured with an intentional gap right in the middle of the page/poem, guiding the readers’ eyes to go left to right and then right to left – again and again is surely Chan inviting us to play, no? Am I misreading it? Got me a bit dizzy, and/but I love it. It’s playful and wonderful. The poems are composed with so much affection and care, gently exposing the poet’s own vulnerabilities – exactly like ‘tea leaves’ unfurling in a hot water (something used in one of Chan’s poems). While the ‘style’ and structure of the poems gives off a playful vibe, the content of the poems are definitely more on the serious side (or at least should be taken seriously/read with care). I’ll definitely come back to at a later date to read again, maybe read ‘better’.
‘…Avoid/ the foetal position because there will be too much blood/ concentrated around the vital organs, by which/ she means: Try to sit up and greet the day anew.’
Also, this is pretty irrelevant, but I’ve met Chan a few times in some poetry events a few years ago. And she's surely one of the sweetest/loveliest (essentially strangers) people I’ve ever met. To be clear, I think we’ve only spoken briefly on one occasion, but despite me being just another poetry enthusiast (as opposed to being a proper poet/writer), Chan was always the one trying to make conversation/offer a friendly smile from across the room. Not like this has anything to do with the book/poetry at all, but I thought it’s a fun little memory to share/add.
‘…on her left cheek // I know it is not my place // to touch it // I listen to the crisp snip-snip // of silver on black…’
August 6, 2020
so you do fencing once and turn gay?????
May 6, 2023
4.5 stars
January 29, 2021
Mary Jean Chan’s Flèche is everything I have felt and ever wanted to say. It gives names to the things I still am in the middle of untangling. It is now my third time going from cover to cover, and each entry births itself anew one revisit after another.
Personal favourites are Always, Rules for a Chinese Child Buying Stationery in a London Bookshop, //, Versions from the Twenty-four Filial Exemplars and Written in a Historically White Space (II).
Personal favourites are Always, Rules for a Chinese Child Buying Stationery in a London Bookshop, //, Versions from the Twenty-four Filial Exemplars and Written in a Historically White Space (II).
December 23, 2023
this was thematically relatable enough to me to incite flashes of resonance, but mostly i wanted it to be more interesting + daring in style, language, etc
July 20, 2020
Our character and is made up from the things that have shaped our life; family, culture, friends, place, education and our sexuality all contribute to our multifaceted personality. These factors can be strained further when you do not fit within a conventional box in the society that you live in.
For Mary Jean Chan growing up in Hong Kong the strains of moving away from her deeply traditional culture and language and telling the world and her mother she was queer was a moment that wrenched their relationship in so many different ways. This collection written in and eight-part poetic sequence is her response.
The words Flèche and flesh are key to the themes running through this book. The first is a fencing term and is her offence against a world that often seeks to attack differences; the second term represents the vulnerabilities of being open to that world.
all the metaphors
Have failed the sea
Is infinitely breakable
My mother is raging
the way waves do
I thought that these were beautifully written poems that play with the poetic form on the page. What is very evident thought is her vulnerability as she stands against the tide of her culture, she resists the pressure to conform, she grows in inner strength. I was fortunate to have won this with the others on the Costa shortlist from 2019 and I must say that they have all been good so far.
Three Favourite Poems
Magnolias
At The Castro
beauty
For Mary Jean Chan growing up in Hong Kong the strains of moving away from her deeply traditional culture and language and telling the world and her mother she was queer was a moment that wrenched their relationship in so many different ways. This collection written in and eight-part poetic sequence is her response.
The words Flèche and flesh are key to the themes running through this book. The first is a fencing term and is her offence against a world that often seeks to attack differences; the second term represents the vulnerabilities of being open to that world.
all the metaphors
Have failed the sea
Is infinitely breakable
My mother is raging
the way waves do
I thought that these were beautifully written poems that play with the poetic form on the page. What is very evident thought is her vulnerability as she stands against the tide of her culture, she resists the pressure to conform, she grows in inner strength. I was fortunate to have won this with the others on the Costa shortlist from 2019 and I must say that they have all been good so far.
Three Favourite Poems
Magnolias
At The Castro
beauty
September 14, 2022
(4.5, rounded up)
Well, this got me crying at the uni library.
Well, this got me crying at the uni library.
March 29, 2023
T told me to read this a few years ago on our first proper friend hang. She said I'd like it. I was like ok, cool, will do, but I have too much on my TBR atm. And now we share a home and I picked it up randomly, and she was right — I like this very much. I think somr life things needed to happen for these poems to resonate the way they do, so the timing actually feels very right.
August 10, 2021
Mary Jean Chan's debut collection threads the line of accessibility and emotion, reminding me of Raymond Antrobus's The Perseverance which came out just the year before in 2018. Like Raymond, Mary Jean's poetry seeks to reconcile herself with her family, and the key cluster of poems in this collection are to do with Mary Jean's mother. In "Names (1)", the speaker says "It isn't always easy / keeping your name sheltered from my / mother's ears, but I try". The relationship between mother and daughter is one of unspoken silence, of circling across each other, trying to find a way to reconcile even as misunderstandings persist between them.
While Mary Jean's writing is no doubt assured and confident, as a reader, Fleche is not for me. Upon reflection, this reaction stems from the presentation of bilingualism in Fleche. While there are poems with Chinese characters standing alongside English, like the sequence, "Written in a Historically White Space", Mary Jean's relationship with her mother is largely translated and relayed to us in English. Sometimes, the translation targets a specific phrase or idiom (see "Rules for a Chinese Child"), other times fragments of a larger conversation (see "The Horse and the Monkey"). The results are presented in italics, the italicization gesturing faintly towards the ripples of translation made long before the poems were printed.
I struggled with these poems that decided that English is a suitable vessel for presenting the experiences of conversing in bilingual contexts. While Mary Jean takes on the role of the ferryman between languages, and her poems are more than capable of smoothing over the ruptures that result, when I look at Fleche I feel like I'm trying to peer through a thick layer of ice to glimpse at the shadows moving underneath. A wealth of emotion tied up in language switching and deflection is not accessed, left on the cutting floor. Yet, I can't fault Fleche. I remember speaking with a Scottish poet once who said he was completely left cold by Fleche's use of Chinese -- even in its already limited form. Where I saw a glossy veneer that obscured, my Scottish friend was pushed away entirely. Translation is a choice bound up in considerations of an intended audience’s capacity and willingness to understand; there are no right or wrong answers for what a collection will be, who it is targeted at, and what messages it can hold.
In sum, the accolades Fleche won are well deserved, and I would happily read more of Mary Jean's writing in the future. In terms of audience, however, this collection was not aimed at me.
While Mary Jean's writing is no doubt assured and confident, as a reader, Fleche is not for me. Upon reflection, this reaction stems from the presentation of bilingualism in Fleche. While there are poems with Chinese characters standing alongside English, like the sequence, "Written in a Historically White Space", Mary Jean's relationship with her mother is largely translated and relayed to us in English. Sometimes, the translation targets a specific phrase or idiom (see "Rules for a Chinese Child"), other times fragments of a larger conversation (see "The Horse and the Monkey"). The results are presented in italics, the italicization gesturing faintly towards the ripples of translation made long before the poems were printed.
I struggled with these poems that decided that English is a suitable vessel for presenting the experiences of conversing in bilingual contexts. While Mary Jean takes on the role of the ferryman between languages, and her poems are more than capable of smoothing over the ruptures that result, when I look at Fleche I feel like I'm trying to peer through a thick layer of ice to glimpse at the shadows moving underneath. A wealth of emotion tied up in language switching and deflection is not accessed, left on the cutting floor. Yet, I can't fault Fleche. I remember speaking with a Scottish poet once who said he was completely left cold by Fleche's use of Chinese -- even in its already limited form. Where I saw a glossy veneer that obscured, my Scottish friend was pushed away entirely. Translation is a choice bound up in considerations of an intended audience’s capacity and willingness to understand; there are no right or wrong answers for what a collection will be, who it is targeted at, and what messages it can hold.
In sum, the accolades Fleche won are well deserved, and I would happily read more of Mary Jean's writing in the future. In terms of audience, however, this collection was not aimed at me.
April 20, 2021
Lugesin kolmandat korda, aprill 2021. Hirmus, kui hea see on.
Maapaos olles uurisin välja, kuidas käib Tallinna keskraamatukogu kaudu ingliskeelsete e-raamatute laenutamine ning valisin selle testimaks, lihtsalt sest Faber&Faberi raamatud on ilusad, üsna kõhnad, ja luulet võib ju vähemalt väisata, aga - lotovõit! See meeldis mulle väga väga väga.
Queerness, Shanghai ja sõnaseadmisoskus.
Natuke mõlkus mõttes "Õnnerõõmu klubi" aga ilmselt ainult seetõttu, et ega ma rohkem vist Aasiast pärit immigrantide igapäevaeluseiku lugenud olegi: vanematest ja lastest ja nende ootustest, ajaloost, alla neelatud sõnadest ja kõigest.
Pean korra vast veel lugema, enne kui tagasi annan.
Maapaos olles uurisin välja, kuidas käib Tallinna keskraamatukogu kaudu ingliskeelsete e-raamatute laenutamine ning valisin selle testimaks, lihtsalt sest Faber&Faberi raamatud on ilusad, üsna kõhnad, ja luulet võib ju vähemalt väisata, aga - lotovõit! See meeldis mulle väga väga väga.
Queerness, Shanghai ja sõnaseadmisoskus.
Natuke mõlkus mõttes "Õnnerõõmu klubi" aga ilmselt ainult seetõttu, et ega ma rohkem vist Aasiast pärit immigrantide igapäevaeluseiku lugenud olegi: vanematest ja lastest ja nende ootustest, ajaloost, alla neelatud sõnadest ja kõigest.
Pean korra vast veel lugema, enne kui tagasi annan.
January 16, 2021
At times, I felt as if her writing was hinged on the presumption of an outsider audience. It didn’t feel like she was writing to her community or to herself, but rather writing filtered and mangled, through a desire to proactively interpret for non-diasporic readers. I wish these poems had been less safe, more daring in their vituperations of emotion, more experimental with form and ambiance. Too many articles for my liking; poems were stymied and stilted by them. Wish there had been more Cantonese and Mandarin woven in.
May 27, 2020
Amazing debut - a collection of smart, lyrical poetry drawing deep from the poet's experiences and those of her family's. Masterful articulation of complex ideas and emotions in just simple words and imagery. Behind every line, sense of otherness stalks, always there. Possibly the most beautiful thing I've read in a long time.
Read
December 29, 2024before we were dating, my girlfriend lent me this book, saying flippantly to me, “it’s relevant”. neither of us had any idea how relevant it would become now - so relevant she gave me the book to keep.
you make me believe it will get better. i love you always.
you make me believe it will get better. i love you always.
August 21, 2020
Wow just wonderful, definitely hit in the queer way
July 29, 2023
- i re-read this and i think i got so much out of it on my second read! truly, genuinely one of my favorite collections
March 20, 2022
So many wonderful elements in this, and a very engaging collection overall.
I say "elements," because some of the poems as a whole felt a little underwhelming, leaving me wanting more power, or just more of what was good. Several of the poems out and some I enjoyed less, largely I suspect due to my lack of familiarity with some of the cultural references. Other aspects were very relatable - I appreciated the reference to sitting "atop a bouldering block at the Castle / my fear of heights thinning the air." Often, what struck me most was the beauty of the language.
Some personal favourites - sadly I have been unable to replicate the indenting and unusual line divisions / spacing:
from Rise and Shine
Last night the faucet broke, and you cursed
the water for failing you. You have had enough
of water, that embryonic fluid that broke you
onto this patch of earth, screaming
and alone. Water reminds me of your mother's
grief, so you down three glasses and wish the ice caps across the Arctic would flood the whole world.
from Safe Space (III)
where the logic of hips isn't a stranglehold to the heart
where you kiss my eyelid with the windows flung open
from what my mother (a poet) might say (II)
be a river she might say
be the water that flows
over & under & along
... be the rainbow that leaps
into that cleansed dome
of sky after storms erupt
from the breasts of millions
be the tree that praises
even when the cacophony
of tractors drown out its hymns
...
Splitting
the poet does not understand everything
but being self-aware knows enough to say
splitting is a defence mechanism against
love and its absences
truth is a sky that burns dark
with a ll its hidden stars missed items
the poet has now singed so diligently
from the page: the time her mother
bought them a double bed
gifted her lover with a coral ring set in silver
a mother's talent for jewellery design
an artist's anguish how her mother
paid for plane tickets for two
invited them to stay and they did
the night she could no longer bear
their collective grief she wondered if any
of the joy would become apparent
in a future poem of hers
Wish
I would like to live like the trees
my lover often says look up!
as she admires a canopy of green
her tree-like behaviour astounds me
if you'd looked within me now, you'd see
that my languages are like roots
gnarled in soil, one and indivisible
except the world divides me endlessly
some days I dare not look at the trees
they are such hopeful creatures
if the legislators of our world
looked to their trees for guidance
would they reconsider everything?
lately I've been trying to write
a poem that might birth a tree
a genuine acceptance of the self
continues to elude me
from an eternal &
nothing but the enlightened land soil loosening into surf sinking softly
the weight of hours every second symphonic ocean is never elsewhere
always here in the eternal stillness of depths ripples eyeing the shore
wings arching origami out of air you are there a shape I have come to
know so well your head is a compass your arms slipping between
the ocean's breath I am ready to hold a body of sun kiss it nine times
goodnight time is elsewhere as silence deafens into sound we are holding
each other amid the night's falling all the stars have plunged to earth
a glistening pier look I say to you listen watch how can we make it through
another day on this shore of lifetimes we'll have this ocean an eternal &
I also loved Names II, Dragon Hill Spa and The Importance of Tea.
I say "elements," because some of the poems as a whole felt a little underwhelming, leaving me wanting more power, or just more of what was good. Several of the poems out and some I enjoyed less, largely I suspect due to my lack of familiarity with some of the cultural references. Other aspects were very relatable - I appreciated the reference to sitting "atop a bouldering block at the Castle / my fear of heights thinning the air." Often, what struck me most was the beauty of the language.
Some personal favourites - sadly I have been unable to replicate the indenting and unusual line divisions / spacing:
from Rise and Shine
Last night the faucet broke, and you cursed
the water for failing you. You have had enough
of water, that embryonic fluid that broke you
onto this patch of earth, screaming
and alone. Water reminds me of your mother's
grief, so you down three glasses and wish the ice caps across the Arctic would flood the whole world.
from Safe Space (III)
where the logic of hips isn't a stranglehold to the heart
where you kiss my eyelid with the windows flung open
from what my mother (a poet) might say (II)
be a river she might say
be the water that flows
over & under & along
... be the rainbow that leaps
into that cleansed dome
of sky after storms erupt
from the breasts of millions
be the tree that praises
even when the cacophony
of tractors drown out its hymns
...
Splitting
the poet does not understand everything
but being self-aware knows enough to say
splitting is a defence mechanism against
love and its absences
truth is a sky that burns dark
with a ll its hidden stars missed items
the poet has now singed so diligently
from the page: the time her mother
bought them a double bed
gifted her lover with a coral ring set in silver
a mother's talent for jewellery design
an artist's anguish how her mother
paid for plane tickets for two
invited them to stay and they did
the night she could no longer bear
their collective grief she wondered if any
of the joy would become apparent
in a future poem of hers
Wish
I would like to live like the trees
my lover often says look up!
as she admires a canopy of green
her tree-like behaviour astounds me
if you'd looked within me now, you'd see
that my languages are like roots
gnarled in soil, one and indivisible
except the world divides me endlessly
some days I dare not look at the trees
they are such hopeful creatures
if the legislators of our world
looked to their trees for guidance
would they reconsider everything?
lately I've been trying to write
a poem that might birth a tree
a genuine acceptance of the self
continues to elude me
from an eternal &
nothing but the enlightened land soil loosening into surf sinking softly
the weight of hours every second symphonic ocean is never elsewhere
always here in the eternal stillness of depths ripples eyeing the shore
wings arching origami out of air you are there a shape I have come to
know so well your head is a compass your arms slipping between
the ocean's breath I am ready to hold a body of sun kiss it nine times
goodnight time is elsewhere as silence deafens into sound we are holding
each other amid the night's falling all the stars have plunged to earth
a glistening pier look I say to you listen watch how can we make it through
another day on this shore of lifetimes we'll have this ocean an eternal &
I also loved Names II, Dragon Hill Spa and The Importance of Tea.
November 4, 2019
A fantastic debut collection, Flèche is a very moving collection of poems about dislocation, queerness and love. Chan is bilingual in English and Cantonese, and these poems explore moving through two languages, English as a imperialist tool, and how speaking different languages in different aspects of one's life create a sense of splitting. It's also a very nuanced and thought-provoking portrait of relationships with family, particularly the mother and daughter relationship. The mother in these poems does not accept her daughter's queer identity or relationship with another woman, and the evocation of love, distrust and grief are teased out in an emotional and careful way. The collection also explores love and gives a portrait of a relationship between two women who have learnt to be tender towards one another and place an emphasis on trust, such as in They Would Have All That
How have I hurt you? Such asking becomes routine,
almost like walking down the aisle of a supermarket
at evening, but it is what they do best. Beyond desire:
two clasped bodies holding the heart's ache at bay.
This is also a collection about trauma: the mother in these poems has experienced loss and famine during the Mao years, and violence at the hands of the Red Guards. The poet writes four very moving poems called "Safe Space", about seeking areas of safety when the world feels too frightening. Chan's exploration of trauma is both tender and raw, an unflinching look at the ways in which we are psychologically wounded, and how trauma can be passed through families. Chan's language is usually very straightforward, and her poems use short lines and precise imagery: the poems are easy to read quickly, but bear rereading. This is an important collection that gives a window into a particular experience, but should also be meaningful to a lot of people. I recommend it highly.
How have I hurt you? Such asking becomes routine,
almost like walking down the aisle of a supermarket
at evening, but it is what they do best. Beyond desire:
two clasped bodies holding the heart's ache at bay.
This is also a collection about trauma: the mother in these poems has experienced loss and famine during the Mao years, and violence at the hands of the Red Guards. The poet writes four very moving poems called "Safe Space", about seeking areas of safety when the world feels too frightening. Chan's exploration of trauma is both tender and raw, an unflinching look at the ways in which we are psychologically wounded, and how trauma can be passed through families. Chan's language is usually very straightforward, and her poems use short lines and precise imagery: the poems are easy to read quickly, but bear rereading. This is an important collection that gives a window into a particular experience, but should also be meaningful to a lot of people. I recommend it highly.
March 23, 2021
A slow read this one is. And what a perfect embodiment of othernesses. (I really do not want to express it that way - however, that is the state of the world we live in. So far.) What Mary Jean Chan does here is that she opens doors to many avenues that one wants to keep walking on - the exile Chinese avenue, in UK as well as in Hong Kong, the avenue of a young poet, the language avenue, the avenue of a body, the avenue of gender & the avenue of love.
Every word can cause an earthquake. This is the poetry stepping into a new territory. Bring it on, Mary Jean, bring it on!
Every word can cause an earthquake. This is the poetry stepping into a new territory. Bring it on, Mary Jean, bring it on!
July 22, 2025
This was my first poetry collection read since high school. I was deeply moved and brought to tears many times.
I think I’ve always seen poetry as something that was forced upon me in school and having the privilege of being able to come to my own conclusions/interpretations myself has been really beautiful.
Mary Jean Chan has encapsulated so many feelings about queerness and immigration so stunningly, and many poems resonated with me in such a meaningful way.
I think I’ve always seen poetry as something that was forced upon me in school and having the privilege of being able to come to my own conclusions/interpretations myself has been really beautiful.
Mary Jean Chan has encapsulated so many feelings about queerness and immigration so stunningly, and many poems resonated with me in such a meaningful way.
January 25, 2024
“Meanwhile, your fingers brush the wrist of another girl as you jostle into the assembly hall, and you understand that sin was never meant to be easy, only sweet.”
Mary Jean Chan is a voice for all Chinese queer women with maternal trauma. Thank goodness for her.
There were times when her poetry was almost painful to read - too raw, real, personal. I had to squint through it, hold my breath. Reading this made my chest hurt actually.
Mary Jean Chan is a voice for all Chinese queer women with maternal trauma. Thank goodness for her.
There were times when her poetry was almost painful to read - too raw, real, personal. I had to squint through it, hold my breath. Reading this made my chest hurt actually.
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