From the kitchens of mother, grandmother, and self, Kathryn Lennon’s debut collection Duckweed 浮萍 is the culmination of years of reading, writing, publishing, and performing.

Duckweed 浮萍 gets it’s title from a Chinese proverb describing wanderers, people with little or no roots. The poems in this collection explore the process of wayfinding: acting as signposts through landscapes of time and space as the poet works to locate herself in language, race, gender, place, culture, migration, and a collective and family history. Problematizing orientalist tropes, these poems wander between English and Chinese, at times keeping the languages separate, at times interweaving them. They wander between the personal, the historical, the systemic; between Edmonton’s and Vancouver’s Chinatowns; between the kitchens of mother, grandmother, and self. 

Kathryn Lennon’s debut collection is the culmination of years of reading, writing, publishing, and performing her poetry throughout Canada. Recalling the work of Christine Wu and D.M. Bradford, Lennon is a poet engaged in the practice of elevating everyday lived experience towards the sublime. Kathryn Lennon is a poignant new voice in Canadian poetry.