If you like underwater creatures, Scorpios, and “neon pulses”
Dream of Me As Water by David Ly
VIOLETS’ PICKS 019
Where I found it
A few months ago, at an independent bookstore close to me. The author is a local, so I snagged a signed copy (my first!). Then, it stayed in my poetry stack until I got through the books I had stockpiled because I was sick last month and forgot to do a whole bunch of life things, like pause the holds on my library account. (Tip for anyone trying to read more and who lives close to a public library: Stop adding books to your TBR list, your Notes, or your Goodreads account. Just put it on hold at the library.) When I finally made a dent, I looked up and it was almost mid-year. And then I looked back down and everyone marketing something now is telling me that May was AANHPI Month and June is Pride Month. Now, usually my preference isn’t to make a big splash about any of it but to instead steadily and stealthily share the work of writers from diverse communities, business as usual. The ex-marketer in me is still nursing the battle wounds of packaging everything up neatly and loudly to drive sales. I’ve turned to my own preferred mode of psychological manipulation: radical normalization. But I’m going to break my own standards—never any rules here—because, as I’m writing this we’re on the cusp of both and I like when things line up. David Ly, a Vietnamese-Canadian who co-edited Queer Little Nightmares: An Anthology of Monstrous Fiction and Poetry, at the top of my pile, with a poetry collection heavy with imagery of water. If you were here two weeks ago, I shared a collection of poems inspired by the cinematic comeback of my favourite childhood Disney princess, The Little Mermaid. It’s all making sense.
First impressions
Blue is the warmest colour. Water is the dreamiest element. The book cover, a fish or mermaid tail, is designed by Ellie Hastings. I feel like I’m getting something dreamy, perhaps surreal, leaning Scorpio. It feels like something I’d read at night getting ready for bed.
They said it
Reading Dream of Me as Water by David Ly is like falling down a rabbit hole and discovering vibrant color and vivid imagination in the depths. An almost Alice in Wonderland-like experience, the book opens the way a drop of ink blooms in water: centered, before it spreads out. From there, Ly takes us from dreamscape to dreamscape, each poem subtly suspending reality at the same time it is very much grounded in it.
—From Kimberly Nguyen for Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network
Lines to remember
White petals flushed with pink unfurled to reveal a crown of purple and blue filaments where I used to think I felt too much, especially when good feelings spread and I couldn’t control how much, how fast —From “Blue Passion”
Memory may not be generous for a second time if I carry too much of myself into the next life. —From “Autobiography as a Thunderstorm”
Caressing his face, beautiful alien-like petals bloomed from his half-closed eyes. —From “What He Saw”
I’m looking to feel better on a budget —From “I Want to Believe in Healing Crystals”
You might like this if…
Your imagination stretches deep into the ocean and far into the galaxies and somehow you find a way to bring it all back to you, or them. You want to believe in essential oils? “I Want To Believe in Essential Oils”. This, to you, isn’t overwhelming: Godzilla, Lana Del Rey and Stevie Nicks, attempts to reset the Instagram algorithm weave in and out of poems that are nightmares, dreams, wishes upon stars and sea creatures. Last but not least, you want to read a love story. A grown up version of “He loves me, he loves me not”. That’s why, like it or not, you are here looking poetry square in the eye when you found it hard to look into theirs.
This was the colour of…
Blue? Blue.
Details
Year: 2022
Author: David Ly, who master’s research project was a case study on producing and marketing diverse children’s picture books
Location: Vancouver
Publisher: Palimpsest Press
This week’s find-the-poem game
How to play: Unscramble the excerpt from one of David Ly’s poems below and see if you can find the full poem somewhere on the www. We’ll reveal the poem next Sunday.
dna gnillac uoy enim lliw eb ekil gniman eht cimsoc nonemohnep on eno thguoht ot kool rof ni suirpoc, a trsub fo toliev thgil ta eht pit fo sti regnits ahtt dekraps eht lasrever fo selpo seinttissc aetdapicitn rof os gnol.
Did you guess it? Last week’s featured poem was “New Dawning” by Amber Tamblyn, published at Poets. Click to read the full poem.
You’re reading Violets’ Picks, where every Sunday I take you through an adventure brought to you by a poetry collection. Here’s some other Violets’ Picks this month you may have missed:
