Pey Oh's second pamphlet reveals a sizzling, uncomfortable Penang and a Malaysia as seen by a 'foreign daughter come home' when she returns bearing gifts:

Alone too, I can only offer kinship,

marzipan, M&S fruitcake, faint carols,

mixed spice of winter, holly-wreathed…

This poet carries both East and West in her pocket and travels through time with her ancestors. Her images settle as lightly as a Luna Moth. Her characters step out of saltboxes, watch spaceships on the moon, smash phoenix bowls rebelliously and answer the Lucky Cat's repeated beckoning. In landscapes full of creatures, wild boars 'come to root and rip'; raccoons are 'bouncing off each other in dry leaves'; the poet's own thoughts are 'little black bats'. From the 'small drawers' of a Sinseh's shop, she brings you 'Dried seahorse, chrysanthemum flowers for tea, ginseng root, strange black fungus, goodness knows': tender medicine, steeping the strangeness of memory in absurd joy and a lingering ache.

'I was stunned by the subtle power of Pey Oh’s poems which quietly detonate like dropped porcelain bowls, subverting patriarchy by sleight of hand.' - Pascale Petit

'Wherever her poetry leads, historically or geographically, evoking a whole story or a vivid moment, it puts the reader in the heart of the experience.' - Philip Gross

Price £8.99

ISBN: 9781911824008

Pub Date: 12th Nov 2026

Pub: VERVE Poetry Press

Format: Paperback

Extent: 36 pp

POETRY pamphlet