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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'Eileen Chong’s new collection continues her exploration of the contemplative and the personal within subtly shifting contexts of food, love, history and culture. Lovers of her poetry will find much that is familiar and much that is new. Over the three volumes of work represented on this page the reader can map a transition from a precocious apprenticeship to a mature voice, through moments of light and happiness mixed with hints of grief and foreboding.
'As always her technical confidence and linguistic sophistication allow her to offer poems which appear simple on the surface, transparent enough to appreciate at a first reading and yet which contain depths and resonances which repay repeated attention and thought. Through this combination of beauty and depth, Eileen Chong commands a wide and devoted following.' (Publication summary)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Sparse Versification and Delicately Restrained Language
2017
single work
essay
— Appears in: Rochford Street Review , July-September no. 23 2017;
— Review of Painting Red Orchids 2016 selected work poetry -
Review Short: Eileen Chong’s Painting Red Orchids
2017
single work
essay
— Appears in: Cordite Poetry Review , 1 May vol. 80 no. 2017;'In his short story ‘A Little Ramble’, champion of the anti-heroic Robert Walser says, ‘We don’t need to see anything out of the ordinary. We already see so much’. In her third collection, Painting Red Orchids, Singaporean Australian Eileen Chong testifies to ordinary experience as the sensory and emotional kaleidoscope of the individual. These are the lyrical portraits of a perpetual itinerant, her introverted recordings of private joys, loneliness and fascination with solitary journeying through a rich inner world. Sensorial and intellectual curiosity abound in her peripatetic wanderings any place and any time: Sydney’s Chinatown, Parramatta, the seaside, the Australian goldfields, Tang dynasty China, a friend’s kitchen.' (Introduction)
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Eileen Chong. Painting Red Orchids
2017
single work
criticism
— Appears in: World Literature Today , January - February vol. 91 no. 1 2017; (p. 86-87) 'Eileen Chong identifies writing as “an act of recovery, of piecing together, of recording, re-ordering and re-inventing.” In Painting Red Orchids, her third collection, the poet scans the stormy dissonance of places populated by particular emotional weathers, and this short book of lyrical investigation is a virtuosic performance of “questions fall[ing] like wet leaves” against, perhaps, the wet black boughs of turbulent experience.' -
Geoff Page Reviews Painting Red Orchids by Eileen Chong
2016
single work
review
— Appears in: Mascara Literary Review , September no. 19 2016;
— Review of Painting Red Orchids 2016 selected work poetry
-
Geoff Page Reviews Painting Red Orchids by Eileen Chong
2016
single work
review
— Appears in: Mascara Literary Review , September no. 19 2016;
— Review of Painting Red Orchids 2016 selected work poetry -
Sparse Versification and Delicately Restrained Language
2017
single work
essay
— Appears in: Rochford Street Review , July-September no. 23 2017;
— Review of Painting Red Orchids 2016 selected work poetry -
Eileen Chong. Painting Red Orchids
2017
single work
criticism
— Appears in: World Literature Today , January - February vol. 91 no. 1 2017; (p. 86-87) 'Eileen Chong identifies writing as “an act of recovery, of piecing together, of recording, re-ordering and re-inventing.” In Painting Red Orchids, her third collection, the poet scans the stormy dissonance of places populated by particular emotional weathers, and this short book of lyrical investigation is a virtuosic performance of “questions fall[ing] like wet leaves” against, perhaps, the wet black boughs of turbulent experience.' -
Review Short: Eileen Chong’s Painting Red Orchids
2017
single work
essay
— Appears in: Cordite Poetry Review , 1 May vol. 80 no. 2017;'In his short story ‘A Little Ramble’, champion of the anti-heroic Robert Walser says, ‘We don’t need to see anything out of the ordinary. We already see so much’. In her third collection, Painting Red Orchids, Singaporean Australian Eileen Chong testifies to ordinary experience as the sensory and emotional kaleidoscope of the individual. These are the lyrical portraits of a perpetual itinerant, her introverted recordings of private joys, loneliness and fascination with solitary journeying through a rich inner world. Sensorial and intellectual curiosity abound in her peripatetic wanderings any place and any time: Sydney’s Chinatown, Parramatta, the seaside, the Australian goldfields, Tang dynasty China, a friend’s kitchen.' (Introduction)
Awards
- 2017 shortlisted Prime Minister's Literary Awards — Poetry
- 2017 shortlisted Victorian Premier's Literary Awards — Prize for Poetry
