Christine Wu, familial hungers: poems

 

THE TASTE EQUIVALENT OF A GLIMPSE

Gustatory wink, olfactory flicker, food
flashback. A resuscitation
that rockets by, a blur that ignites
sleeping palates, lightning jolt
just out of reach and not quite enough
to awaken the full-flavour dream, leaving
behind a full-bodied craving. No words
for this brief animal possession. Fleeting
infuriating, unannounced, swift knock
on the door of nostalgia, ding-dong ditch
at the mouth of memory.

I’m only just now getting to the full-length poetry debut by Halifax-based Vancouver poet Christine Wu, her familial hungers: poems (Kingston ON: Brick Books, 2025), a collection that describes itself as a “lyric feast,” as the poems that make up the collection purposefully write through and around food, and into a foundation of family. “The only way my mother knows how to say hello: / a three-minute broth awaiting my prodigal return // at midnight, ” the poem “THREE-MINUTE LOVE LETTER” begins, “filling the space between hunger / and sustenance, waxen strands in a bath // of rehydrated crystals, silver foil sachet packed / with the myths of MSG that keeps white ghosts away.” Wu writes on family turmoil and childhood memories, and the collisions of language and culture, offering a way through food as both foundation, and a means through articulating the conflicts and the discomforts, the unspoken, and what should never have been. Wu writes food, whether preparation, shared meals or particular dishes, as a cultural and familial underpinning, impossible to distinguish from the rest of her upbringing. As the poem “WHY I STOPPED COMING HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS” begins: “Because I was scheduled to work. because flight costs / kept going up. Because I was embarrassed // by your accent. Because I hated Chinese / school. Because rice. Because teenage angst // never ends. Because he hit me when he was angry / and called it discipline. Because you did not stop him.”

Set in four titled groupings of first-person lyric narrative poems—“Residue of Hunger,” “Offerings at the Altar,” “Shadow Histories” and the title section, “Familial Hungers”—Wu’s poems provide a kind of landscape across the messiness of family, and family residue, and attempting to find where the narrator might themselves land, amid this background. It is through these poems that Wu attempts to reconcile not only her threads of history, but how she herself fits into the narrative of those threads, within it, from her research into various imperial and colonial occupations, articulated specifically through the poem “ANCESTRY.COM HAS NOTHING ON ME,” to exactly what she, in the end, might inherit. “Maybe this insatiable thirst is punishment // for my secret sham: those childhood nights / I stole away from the table,” she writes, near the end of the poem “WHEN ASKED WHY ALL MY POEMS ARE ABOUT SOUP,” “leaning into being // part of a family that’d stopped eating / together, crowded out by silence and hoarded // trauma.” This is a book about examining and reconciling large histories, both immediate and a few steps removed, and that natural impulse to not only discover who we are, but decide, as well, what of the past we might wish to still carry.

WHAT WE INHERIT

Metal tong wan molds.
The holy trinity: ginger, garlic, scallions.
A recipe for pork and watercress jiaozi.
The ability to sleep on a pull-out couch
and call it good. The ability to eat
steamed white rice and call it home.
History of the Great Leap Forward
and the forty-five million who starved. Midnight ramen.
Immigrant instinct to feed every last hungry ghost.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Jane Bow

Jane Bow [photo credit: Grant Collins] grew up in Canada, the United States, Spain, England and Czechia. Three of her four novels have been award finalists in Canada, the U.S. and Britain. Jane has also written for literary journals, Chatelaine Magazine and CBC radio, and has presented her work internationally. She lives in Victoria, Canada.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

My first novel, Dead And Living, was based on the true story of a man who did not know, for 25 years, whether he was a murderer, and finally went to court to find out. I covered his trial in Thunder Bay, Ontario as a newspaper reporter but wanted to write his story as fiction in order to examine what lay behind the facts: how a man could not know whether he had killed someone, and the differences between truth and justice. Shortlisted for an Arthur Ellis award, Dead And Living lit a passion for fiction in me that has never died.

Thirty years later my use of language and elements of story in my fifth novel, The Angels’ Share, just published, are more accomplished. A romantic thriller about the nuclear power of love in sex, in climate-conscious winemaking and in my character’s and her 94-year old grandmother’s heist of a greedy Russian oligarch’s $2 million bottle of cognac, The Angels’ Share takes itself less seriously while also exploring female sexuality, climate connections and morality in a chaotic world. I am as thrilled to see it published as I was with my first book.

2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?

I have always been drawn to the power of story, perhaps because growing up in Canada, the U.S., fascist Spain, Communist Czechoslovakia and the U.K. introduced me to the twists and turns of human behaviour at an early age. I was seven when, driving through the Pyrenees Mountains in the 1950s, my parents smelled smoke under our new German Mercedes Benz for example. Someone had tied a rag to our exhaust pipe with the intention of setting us on fire. Much later as a journalist I soon discovered that human lives are messy and non-fiction serves only facts. Poetry crystallizes a profound moment or idea or image and I wanted entry into the full, colourful, musical panorama of life. Fiction gives me that.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

All of the above. A spark of an idea takes time to evolve into a loose framework, which changes as I write. Some scenes fly out onto the page in nearly finished form, others take careful crafting. I take notes while researching my subjects and these immerse me in the feel of what I’m focussing on, then the words come through me onto the page.

4 - Where does a work of prose usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?

I’m always working on a book. I also write the occasional short piece of non-fiction, and sometimes poetry pops out of me, demanding attention, but these are usually tied, in some way, to my main book project.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

Writing is a private process for me but once a book has a publisher I enjoy sharing it through readings and I’ve been lucky to do so in Canada, England, the U.S. and India. My newest book, The Angels’ Share, will launch in Crete, where it is set, with a reading at a winery. I’m definitely looking forward to that!

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

A central theme in all of my books is the power of love, that deep-seated force of growth that lends strength to any human who experiences it, and how love plays out in a world wracked with greed and struggles for power. The current question has to be: will an evolution of human consciousness happen in time to prevent our extinction?

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

A writer’s role varies with her/his/their prevailing culture. In Canada we can write relatively freely, and therefore have a responsibility to mirror how we see our world unfolding. We are also a small country, population-wise however, so it can be hard to find publishers who are not parochial or idealogically constrained.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

Guidance and criticism from an editor are essential to me. I soon learned that if I want my work to shine, I need to park my ego outside my study, preferably down the street. So I can receive, and then assess clearly, the editor’s comments.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

“You have to kill your darlings,” said author Stephen King, though writers have been advising this for generations. We tend to fall in love with some pieces of our prose. Excising them if they don’t serve the story requires putting your reader ahead of your pride and this can be hard. A mentor of mine put it another way: “What use is a sweater with three arms? Cut out the third one and use it as a tea cozy.”

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (novels to non-fiction history to plays and short stories)? What do you see as the appeal?

Writing plays has expanded my skills with dialogue and scene immediacy, and watching my work come to life for an audience was a career high point. Dealing with production conflicts was difficult however for a writer used to working alone. Several of my short stories have been published but I find this form confining. My non-fiction history book was fun to write, and an exercise in serving up research in story form, a skill essential also to novel writing.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

I like to move straight from waking to some form of meditation to breakfast at my desk, where I will stay deeply focussed for several hours on a writing day.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

The still centre of myself is a place where possibilities beyond my consciousness exist. If I park my worries and ambitions there, at some point later solutions to my writing problems invariably present themselves.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

The smell of the sea.

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

Living nature in all its forms is a reflection of what goes on in human beings’ psyches. For this reason books, music, visual art as well as scientific and systems thinking influence my work.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

I love beautifully written fiction that offers a fresh perspective on some aspect of life. Classical writers who helped shape my writing are Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Stendhal, Dickens, Shakespeare. Recent writers include Amor Towles, Richard Powers, Barbara Kingsolver, Margaret Laurence.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

I’d like to read from my new novel, The Angels’ Share, at the winery in Crete where the story took shape.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

If I could write songs and sing and dance while playing a guitar I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be writing novels.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

I never considered any other form of expression. Nobody wants to hear/see my singing, dancing, guitar playing, and splashing paint is something I do just for fun.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

I still think about Richard Powers’ novel Playground. Great films are hard to find these days, though I recently enjoyed Song Sung Blue.

20 - What are you currently working on?

After The Angels’ Share publicity work finishes I’ll return to work on One Night With A Violin (working title,) a historical romantic thriller set in Cold War Prague.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Canadian Poets Series : Peripety and/or Tronies

A while back, American writer Olivia Cronk invited me to participate in her Peripety and/or Tronies blog, a site that includes, as she offered via email, “established writers with whom i’m friendly & student writers & others who like to think in writing, etc. not fancy, no gate-keeping.” I was curious at the suggestion, a thread I could offer in-between all the other notices of readings, new publications, interviews and the like. In the end, I thought it would be interesting to offer Cronk’s students, already attempting to pay attention to writing and readings and new publications, a glimpse into some of the amazingness of Canadian poetry, especially during the current climate. The “Canadian Poets Series” offers short biographies on contemporary poets working in various corners across the country, each featuring a healthy-sized author biography with links to publications, and poems and interviews online. I like the idea of these posts as being introductory, able to catch a good sense of what each poet has done and is in the midst of, through these rather straightforward biographical posts. We should be celebrating ourselves, after all, with all the self-reliance, self-reflection and dignity our sovereignty provides.

The first thirty-one posts in this ongoing series have landed online since the beginning of March 2025—ryan fitzpatrick, Renée Sarojini Saklikar, Kate Siklosi, Jake Byrne, Tolu Oloruntoba, Maggie Burton, Armand Garnet Ruffo, Ellen Chang-Richardson, Jen Currin, Mark Goldstein, Jessi MacEachern, Pete Smith, Farah Ghafoor, Dale Smith, Oana Avasilichioaei, Darby Minott Bradford, Melanie Dennis Unrau, Gregory Betts, Jérôme Melançon, Stephanie Bolster, Otoniya J Okot Bitek, J.R. Carpenter, Sheri-D Wilson, Conyer Clayton, Gillian Sze, Charlie Petch, Cameron Anstee, Cecily Nicholson, Britta B., Derek Beaulieu and Brandi Bird—with forthcoming posts featuring Alice Burdick, Chris Banks, Misha Solomon, Meredith Quartermain and Beatriz Hausner, among others. We are Canadian! And we are amazing.

Hannah Karpinski, Lateral Sway

Words among friends are gestural. I reach towards what I mean to say and am met before I touch it, understood in my halfway expression. That top I like gestures at something unique to each speaker, yet instantly recognized regardless of who asks.

Language among friends blooms with paralinguistic potential—I don’t need to speak to be understood. I communicate with my body, my nonverbal sounds, the pressure of a touch, a meaningful raise of my eyebrows, a long look. Every action that implicates an other is expressive in its intent. When I wash all the dishes in a shared space, I am saying to the other, I know you are busy—here’s one less thing on your plate. When I wake up to a half-full pot of coffee with my name on it, I understand it as a gift of time. The other knows my routine and simplifies it by extending something of their own. (“Can I borrow that top I like?”)

The full-length debut by Toronto poet Hannah Karpinski is Lateral Sway (Montreal QC: Metatron, 2026), a book-length suite of extended lyrics, lively first-person gestures, intimacies and observations around memory, climate change and queer desire. “there is something in the air all summer / how else do you explain the static,” writes, as part of the extended lyric “forecast,” “as everything inevitably cools, the dipper / dives into the horizon & we say goodbye / like the last time [.]” Moving between poems with line breaks to extended prose blocks, Karpinski’s stitched fragments write on love, loss and longing, writing out the intimate underpinnings of her lyric gestures. Her heart is on display, but never recklessly so, even despite herself, writing through and around the summer possibilities of youth. Summer love, both romantic and platonic, in all that might bring, but a wariness as much as there is hope. Later in the same poem, offering: “these days belong to the present, then / the past, loops around & belong / to the present again—& they find you / one ear against the pavement / as close to the Earth as you can be [.]”

As her author biography describes her work: “Diving into intimate personal archives and collective memory, she writes about queer friendship and queer desire.” Karpinski’s poems might hold that as their foundation, but the poems are broader, more expansive than that particular tag-line might suggest, writing love, labour and grief, and the immediate grief of reacting to club shootings, such as the poem “laps,” that includes:

when I hear 5 killed in Colorado I want to Uber you to my work & bury
            my face in your neck
when I hear 49 killed in Colorado I’m at work too & you
            are still on the horizon of my life
how do we keep going? I miss you, I’m sick
            of this labour of performing grace, of penning people to poems,
            of asking the most ridiculous question       over & over: 

Would you like your receipt?

To be young and queer is to negotiate between such poles, from the usual arrays of love, desire and carefree optimism to a gut-wrenching fear of violence that no body anywhere should have to endure. Not a wariness, perhaps, but a sense of unease, that leans occasionally into dread, during such moments. Despite this, Karpinski clearly chooses to live on the side of optimism: “I still measure my life in summers,” she writes, as part of the extended fragment-sequence “laps,” “still loosen / my bathing suit & dive / off the highest rocks first [.]” This is such a smart, serious, joyful and enduringly thoughtful text, threading a lyric with elements of the first-person essay/memoir, one that rewards with multiple readings, and displays such delight in her line, in her engaged lyric. Further to the extended piece “Can I borrow that top I like?,” as Karpinski writes:

Clothes, too, have a language, a life, and “each garment,” for Anne Boyer, “holds in it hours.” We call first dibs on garbage bags stuffed with donation items because those bags are full of time, of dormant memory. Clothes are a shared skin; putting them on, we brush against each other. When we wear that top we are back at that party, back at the beach, we are about to eat sandwiches and drink beer in the park.