Bright Fear

Following her Costa Poetry Award-winning debut, Flèche (2019), comes Mary Jean Chan's second collection: Bright Fear. These poems further explore the distinctively intertwined themes of identity, language and postcolonial legacy. They are bedded in key moments from Chan's childhood in Hong Kong and her life, 'racialised and queer', in the UK. Questions of acceptance and assimilation are examined, whether in a mother's ambivalence or the specious jargon of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. The experience of living through a SARS outbreak with a father as a doctor is horribly revivified as, once again, the existential threat of pandemic becomes reality. Throughout, Chan offers new ways for us to 'withstand the quotidian tug-of-war / between brightness, terror and love'.