Peony

by Eileen Chong

"An engaging new collection from the author of Burning Rice."

Genres: Poetry

77 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

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

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

This chapbook of poetry was a delightful read and refreshing with its mix of memoir and literary whim. I personally found the first part (out of three) to be the superior writing. I sucked away at those poems like hard candy in my mouth. Not only were they charming but also layered with poignant introspections into the crossroads of cultures, and self-awareness and reflection. Not to say that the latter two sections of poetry were in any way below par, but I found the opening poems the most startling and pointed.

I read this chapbook because I know Eileen Chong will be gracing Canberra with her presence soon to release her new publication ‘Rainforest’. I look forward to seeing where she takes me next.

[Jo · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Peony, Eileen Chong deals with a range of themes, from the nature of family and ancestral roots and traditions, to death, friendship, travel, fear and, of course, love.

Throughout the book, her voice is a consistent one. The poems often seem very personal. These attributes can be positive, and many of the poems made me think deeply or inspired feelings. However, I admit I am more drawn to the range that seems more common in prose - see, for example, my review of Foreign Soil by Maxine Beneba Clarke. (That might be an unfair comparison, though, as Clarke's range is just so large.)

I loved many of the poems, and thought the first chapter especially strong in this regard. Particular favourites included "Chinese Singing", "Musician", "Tank Man", "Rice-dumplings", "In Paris We Never", "Mid-air Disaster" and "Map-making". However, one note of Chong's style comes across as a bit affected: many sentences cross not only lines, but stanzas. Where this works, it's fine and sometimes great, but in other poems it seems unnecessary and a little as if Chong is saying "hey, look what I can do". Similarly, the long run of poems all for someone in Chapter III seemed a little as if Chong had been given an assignment to write poems for her friends.

Overall, my enjoyment outweighed the criticism expressed above - and that's the nice thing about a book of poems, you don't have to love them all for it to be a good book. This is a book of poetry which is well worth a look.

[Esther · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sometimes simplistic poetry works and other times it does not. This collection was more miss than hit for me and I was surprised to find it on the HSC school syllabus in NSW. ‘Contemporary Asian Australian Poets’ would have been my preference with its diversity of Asian Australian voices.