Description
Part of the Green Leaves / Red River series in association with Centre for Stories.
Flow is a brilliant, cohesive work of vision and revision. Flow might be disembodied, but the Flow of Chen’s vision is provisionally bodied, a metapoetic spectre who flicks and refracts: mirror, memory and capacious mind. Flow is a truth-teller and a teller of lies with some truth to them. Flow navigates trip-wires and sunlight. Flow moves from currents of dark history, crossing and translating places and generations, holding a light to the violence of racism and exclusion, choosing instead radical openness and connection.
— Felicity Plunkett
To flow is to love and to allow social and emotional complexity to be richly present, but flow can also destroy or deliver cataclysmic consequences when driven by ideology or violence. Chen explores this binary with a rare and beguiling combination of metapoetic wit, heart and disarming political analysis. Aggregate complexity is delivered in deceptively simple lyrics that often test the page as field, exploiting bold enjambments and lineation.
– A Frances Johnson
Born and raised in a small town in Fujian, China, Luoyang Chen has been residing on the unceded Noongar land since 2021. Luoyang is interested in 自然 (the unconcealing/it-self), love and dying, lyric I, and ‘O’. He writes poetry.
Green Leaves / Red River is a collaboration between Centre for Stories and Red River. The project supports eight poets from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds to publish their first book of poetry. The project also provides editorial fellowships to emerging editors. It has been made possible with funding from the West Australian Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries. The series is a collaboration that connects people from different cities with different histories and different experiences, all towards creating a poetic culture that is distinct and unique. With a focus on artistic excellence, Green Leaves / Red River nurtures new voices and supports poets no matter their place in the world. It is a way to share opportunities, to think in an original way, and to continue making poetry visible and valued. We are proud of the work we can do based here in New Delhi and Perth, and acknowledge the traditional owners of both places. Thanks to the readers and dedicated to all the poets out there, Green Leaves / Red River will entertain, intrigue and enlighten you.