sinuous

Through the mind’s eye Lydia Kwa charts the path of the stranger in a new land, the immigrant seeking escape, and transformation from the suffering of the past. Sinuous is a journey toward self-realization and acknowledgest that through the fiery trials of life it is possible to find renewed strength and purpose for the future.

AUTHOR

Lydia Kwa

Lydia Kwa was born in Singapore but moved to Toronto to begin studies in Psychology at the University of Toronto in 1980. After finishing her graduate studies in Clinical Psychology at Queen’s University in Kingston, she moved to Calgary, Alberta; then to Vancouver, BC, and has lived and worked here on the traditional and unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples since 1992.

Kwa has published two books of poetry (The Colours of Heroines, 1992; sinuous, 2013) and four novels (This Place Called Absence, 2000; The Walking Boy, 2005 and 2019; Pulse, 2010 and 2014; Oracle Bone, 2017). Her next novel, A Dream Wants Waking, will be published by Buckrider Books, an imprint of Wolsak & Wynn, in Fall 2023. A third book of poetry from time to new will be published by Gordon Hill Press in Fall 2024.

She won the Earle Birney Poetry Prize in 2018; and her novels have been nominated for several awards, including the Lambda Literary Award for Fiction.

She has also exhibited her artwork at Centre A (2014) and Massy Art Gallery (2018) and has self-published two poetry-visual art chapbooks. An essay “The Wheel of Life: From Paradigm to Presence” appears in the art catalogue In the Present Moment: Buddhism, Contemporary Art, and Social Practice by Haema Sivanesan (Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, 2022).

Reviews

In this fresh suite of poems, Kwa brings great intelligence and sensitivity to bear upon the shock-absorbing process of embodiment, and troubles with integrity. Multiple trans-Pacific passages, roles of persons, and conceptions of divinity and reality, come together through Kwa’s work. Braiding poetry with prose Kwa highlights possible pathways to freedom, and to wholesome.
–Joanne Arnott, author of A Night for the Lady

sinuous is a map that charts both a poetic and psychological journey, a full topographical internal map from Jomon to the culture of the “endless, continuous onslaught of trauma” that colonialism has been for the world. It is a map of the journey from our alienation to our connection with the universe and from one another. More poignantly it bares our alienation from our personal internal world. The incredible poetry in this book will walk you into the light where you may re-connect with self and the world outside.
–Lee Maracle. author of First Wives Club