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Bright Fear

By Mary Jean Chan
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Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
Bright Fear by Mary Jean Chan explores themes of identity, culture, and personal discovery. As the characters navigate the complexities of self-expression and belonging, they delve into life-changing experiences that reshape their understanding of themselves and the world. Through poetic prose and vivid imagery, the book offers insight into the transformation of fear into a source of illumination.
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Format: Paperback / softback
$3299
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

You might enjoy this book if you appreciate exploring complex emotions through poetry, and relish works that elegantly weave themes of identity, personal history, and cultural heritage. Mary Jean Chan's unique voice offers a rich tapestry of introspection and vivid imagery that can captivate lovers of insightful and thought-provoking arts and culture.

Book Hero thinking about your next read

This keenly anticipated new collection from the Costa Poetry Award-winner speaks 'out of fear and grief into splendour and joy'.

This keenly anticipated new collection from the Costa Poetry Award-winner speaks 'out of fear and grief into splendour and joy'.

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

Following their award-winning debut, Fleche (2019), comes Mary Jean Chan's gleaming second collection: Bright Fear. Through poems which engage fearlessly with intertwined themes of identity, multilingualism and postcolonial legacy, Chan's latest work explores a family's evolving dynamics, as well as microaggressions stemming from queerphobia and anti-Asian racism that accompanied the Covid pandemic.

Yet Bright Fear remains deeply attuned to moments of beauty, tenderness and grace. It asks how we might find a home within our own bodies, in places both distant and near, and in the 'constructed space' of the poem. The contemplative central sequence, Ars Poetica, traces the radically healing and transformative role of poetry during the poet's teenage and adult years, culminating in a polyphonic reconciliation of tongues. Throughout, Chan offers us new and galvanising ways to 'withstand the quotidian tug- / of-war between terror and love'.

'[Chan] is one of those rare poets who leave you looking up with a sense that you can engage even the smallest part of the world around you with a much greater intensity.' - PN Review

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780571378906

Publisher: Faber & Faber

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 03 August 2023

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Faber & Faber

Edition: Main

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 6.0mm

Width: 158.0mm

Height: 205.0mm

Weight: 120g

Pages: 72

Collections

Arts & Culture Mary Jean Chan Non-Fiction Poetry

About the Author

Mary Jean Chan is the author of Fleche (Faber, 2019), which won the 2019 Costa Book Award for Poetry and was shortlisted in 2020 for the International Dylan Thomas Prize, the John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize, the Jhalak Prize and the Seamus Heaney Centre First Collection Poetry Prize. In 2021, Fleche was a Lambda Literary Award Finalist. Chan won the 2018 Geoffrey Dearmer Prize and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem in 2017 and 2019, receiving an Eric Gregory Award in 2019. Chan was guest co-editor with Will Harris at The Poetry Review in Spring 2020, and recently co-edited 100 Queer Poems (Vintage, 2022) with Andrew McMillan. They were a Visiting Writer at the Nanyang Technological University Asia Creative Writing Programme in Singapore for Summer 2022. Chan currently serves as Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing (Poetry) at Oxford Brookes University. Born and raised in Hong Kong, Chan lives in Oxford.

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