ABOUT THIS BOOK

In poems of memory, psychogeography, desire, and self-mythologization, then telling be the antidote is Xiao Yue Shan’s assertion against the malignancy of forceful silences.

By illuminating what has been left untold, these writings present the vivid landscape of a mind layering itself over the world, thinking and speaking its way through a myriad of places, objects, and visions. From rooms overlooking Tokyo rivers to Shanghai streets in the thrall of nighttime, Shan throws light on a nation’s quieted crevices, on the distances between the carnal and the eternal, and most pivotally, on the ability of language to elucidate fact with imagination.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Xiao Yue Shan is a poet and editor born in China and living on Vancouver Island. Her chapbook, How Often I Have Chosen Love, was published in 2019.

REVIEWS

"To be modern is to thrive among sudden juxtapositions and to witness deep within the unsettling interstices. In then telling be the antidote, juxtapositions—of past and present, of pastoral and urban, of the bitter lessons of the classics and the untaught lessons of the coming days—arrive and insist with awesome velocity. And yet Xiao Yue Shan tempers that velocity with apparently effortless, almost serene control. There is an uncommon mastery at work in these poems."

— Donald Revell

"Xiao Yue Shan’s then telling be the antidote wrestles with longing and desire like no other. Shan crafts dynamic and ever-evolving portraits of time, place, and beloveds, and the attention paid to all is proof of the poet’s loving eye. ‘[S]uch is the heaven of images,’ Shan writes, which is an equally apt descriptor of the collection itself. Each poem brings to life moment, memory, history, language, and rebellion—asking the question of what it means to write in the face of or despite all the forces that press upon us. The collection is testament and witness to Shan’s power as a poet."

— Wendy Chen, author of Unearthings

"In then telling be the antidote, Xiao Yue Shan writes: 'Sometimes/we spoke in a language so heavy that we passed/the words around in our hands.' In this beautiful book of poems, Shan’s language floats in the liminal space between countries, between history, between language. Shan’s poems explore themes of home, gender, politics, all the while exploring the threshold of the long line. These poems are lush and airy at once, uncertain and certain, powerful and gentle. Shan’s voice is unique and her gifts palpable, and we’re so lucky to have her words passed onto our hands."

— from the Judge’s Citation by Victoria Chang

TABLE OF CONTENTS

acknowledgments viii
a photograph of tomorrow 1
striations 2
maps 7

rises in the urban population determining that each resident be
allotted 1.6 square metres of personal space 8
wealth distribution will not be considered
in the economic reform 9

the coming of spring in the time of martial law 10

witness 11
mong kok, october 2019 12
exile hong kong 13
exodus hong kong 14
the swift light against your face beautiful 17
on the last day of the heisei era 20
modals of lost opportunity 21
ideogram of morning 23
conjuring 25

the nation of aphasia 26

and hong kong in 2001 was always this shade of light blue 28

the right to work 30
inheritance 31
kitchen 33

she says to start with cold water 34
ornithomancy 35
taking note 37

some days come in like a bird through an open window 38

in love as in tourism 39
explain to me fate as if I were a child 40

decade 41
may 35th 43

only in silent shadows and in dreams 44

speak 45
speak again 47

in beijing the young writers ask me why people
always want to talk about censorship 48
the emperor and I dream of immortality 49

looking twice 53
search by no light 54
the dictionary of desire 55

the man I love ran off with everything except my poems 57

eve on a one night stand 58