Collisions, erosions and fractures occur in both external and internal landscapes in Joanne Leow’s seas move away. Lyrical and intimate when addressing lovers and family, Leow’s voice shifts into an incisive investigation of colonial legacies, interrogating and unsettling what is assumed as necessary or wise. Travelling between tropical tidal longings, and the stultifying cold of Saskatchewan winters, the poems in seas move away embody a palette of rich hues and nuanced textures.

-Lydia Kwa, author of Oracle Bone

This is an oceanic collection. Leow’s lyrics, like sea currents, carve out deep recesses into the mind. Her courageous interrogations of power are scalpel-like, delicately exposing the “what histories are interred” in island, cities, and prairie. Her work pounds away at the façade of Canadian tolerance and diversity. It plunges the depths of nostalgia, diving through the layers of heartache with “feet that touch this seabed/ that swim in this tidal river/ that channel, my body/ those minerals, my blood.” The poems drift backwards towards a vanished placed of origins, revealing ancestral knowledge like nacreous shards. Leow’s poetic palate is a little sweet, a little savory. It’s funky with the fermentation of colonial rule, and bitter as a medicinal tonic. Don’t just stand at the edge of this multiplicity–swim in with your strongest strokes.

–Phoebe Wang