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More Than Weeds
About This Book
More Than Weeds, the debut poetry collection by L. Kiew, explores the language of migration and how it is used in relation to plant and animal species, as well as peoples. These knowledgeable and verdant poems draw deeply on botanical and ecological detail and reveal secret histories thriving in the gaps between definitions; here are precious seedlings, unforced flowers, tongues of leaves, tangled roots and rhizomes.
With roots in decolonialising botany and horticulture movements, and influenced by the impact of the climate crisis and regenerative gardening practices, Kiew's poetry is alive and thronging with the interconnected nature of things – and the formative forces of nurture, family, food, refuge and love. Human and plant voices speak for themselves of experiences of belonging and displacement, as well as encounters with violence. These vivid poems that ask us to scrutinise what is really contained or constrained by demarcations – whether those of weed or wildflower, or of borders and hostile environments.
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Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Contents
- Psithurism
- Tulips
- Knotweed
- Underground each word
- Ah Kong held our family together
- Forest text
- Ficus
- Afterlife
- Corydalis lutea
- Splits and rasps
- When we consider everything that grew
- Lassaba
- Seated lady x Ivy-leafed toadflax (x Aubrey Beardsley)
- Red rearranged
- Of rust, smut and mould
- Impatiens glandulifera
- Rhubarb
- Migrant
- Swallow
- Learning to be mixi
- Self-portrait as Bartlett pear
- Gombak
- Bakkwa
- Chicken
- Of the shortest day
- Rabbits
- Kuih Kapit
- Testimony against Robert Fortune and his ilk
- How the tree feels
- Rhododendron
- Open gardens
- Buddleja davidii
- Rust Square
- We’ve taken Rosa
- Wisteria
- On being told by police
- In search of
- You who treat desire like an app on your phone
- Boscage
- Postcards
- Planatus x hispanica
- She’s against thieving
- When the tattooist says I sat like a rock all day, I think
- Karwinski’s fleabane
- If I’d gathered enough or held you
- Francesca
- Phyllotaxis
- Do not trust
- Vandals
- St Anthony’s fire
- When I said I wanted to be
- Geoxyle
- Robinia pseudoaccacia
- Voices I have not heard
- Intent
- Gleditsia tricanthos
- The more I tasted the more I understood
- Only in the interest of national security
- There’s always spontaneous combustion
- We remember when blood and love were just
- These trees were considered beautiful
- Today everything is on fire
- The conservator
- Weeds are wild
- To live here
- Seeding and sproutings
- Horticultural notes and numbers
- Acknowledgements
- About the author and this book