Evelyn Lau

Evelyn Lau perfectly captures the Vancouver that exists for those struggling the most in that beautiful, suffocating, grey city. The way she crafts each verse is so elegant and authentic, gritty and dreamy at the same time, just like Vancouver. She always knows how to speak directly to my soul. As I see her, I feel her seeing me.

This is my first Evelyn Lau book, so I can’t speak generally about her style, but the poems in Living Under Plastic fall squarely into the once dominate, and now waning, literary style that I’ll call Canadian confessional realism. It usually relies heavily on antidote and narrative formulations and most of these poets probably cite Al Purdy as a primary influence (tho he was more lyrical). I do not mean to deride the inflence, because when done well, this mode can make for enjoyable show more poems. With poems that explore lost personal and family relationships, Living Under Plastic, Lau has mixed success in this vein, as the best lines hide among flaccid and less engaging word combinations.

Take “Cafe Artigiano:”

This was my glamorous aunt, from whom a stray smile

or pat on the head was better than any treat—

eylids painted like miniature skies…

We have to wade through two lines of inconsequential preamble before we get to what is actually a memorable, personality-capturing line. What is working in Lau is her ability to tie together a narrative form with layered metaphors that offer real insight. When the narrative scaffolding is taut and trim (which is not often), all goes well. But she clutters the poems with too much structural fill. As a consequence the structure (which should remain invisible) fails.

In “Landlocked” Lau writes: “You would be amazed at how empty / some women feel.” This is already an interesting line: direct, understated and pointing out something we feel we know, but maybe hadn’t realized we know. It rings true. Then she continues “how some days/we walk around like glass vessels/with a blizzard of nothing inside.” A great line, building on, and exemplifying, the earlier observation. Sometimes this kind of layering (a common technique with many poets) can result in mixed metaphor, or overkill, when one image would suffice. Frequently, poets will layer several metaphors or images to make a single point. Usually it dilutes the strength of a line. But here the layering is expansive, and adds something. Lau manages this in few places in Living Under Plastic, but my disappointment lies in how she drifts away from such taut lines into mumbling ones. In the same poem she continues “I sank down in the stillness/and took a picture with his underwater camera/ of my feet…” and later “I watch awards shows from California/on television where even losers are beautifully slump deep in the sofa…” and continues “it seems all / I ever wanted was for someone / to drive me the hell out of here.” These are not very exciting lines of poetry, and there’s plenty here that are less exciting. Why does a poet who is capable of great lines sulk into easy description?

One cannot completely blame the poet for these shortcomings. It is also an editor’s job to push the poet. Living under Plastic has potential, but I wish someone would challenge her a bit more, or that she’d take a bit more time to find ways to highlight what is working and ditch what isn’t. show less

For young adults who are drawn to the fictional autobiography, Go Ask Alice, the poetry and autobiographical journal by Evelyn Lau will be the real thing. Published when Lau was in her mid teens, Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid details her two year experience of life on the streets of Vancouver in the late 1980's. It is her collection of poetry, though, that demonstrates her exceptional ability to observe and write. For teens and adults, this harsh glimpse at the mask that society wears when show more dealing with poverty, addiction and prostitution rings true. In What we do in the name of money, Lau observes, “you caress their faces differently/ than a daughter's hands/it changes the way you watch happy families in the sitcoms.” While language and sexuality make this a challenging book to read, it is an important book to include in high school poetry, particularly in British Columbia. show less

Evelyn Lau has a way of speaking directly to my soul, at once understanding it and taking it by surprise with the clarity of her revelations.