Parade of Storms
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Anvil Press Publishers Inc
Published:30th May '25
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
In her tenth volume of poetry, Parade of Storms, award-winning author Evelyn Lau turns her focus on the weather. Never having thought of herself as an environmental poet, the author found that under the strictures of the pandemic, the recent effects of climate change became more and more intrusive and unavoidable. Storms, floods, wildfires, and environmental devastations sent news headlines leaping out in sharp relief — “a river in the sky,” “atmospheric rivers,” “parade of storms,” “heat dome” — and in such poetic terminology. Weather, both physical and emotional, forms the backdrop to this new collection.
Other themes that appear in the author’s previous work — relationships, the body, aging/illness/mortality, place, mood disorders, the shadows of the past — are explored here too.
Shortlisted for the Al and Eurithe Purdy Poetry Prize
“Each poem in this collection is meticulously infused with vivid details that immerse the reader, evoking the sensation of accompanying Lau as she navigates her experiences firsthand. Her ability to render weather as an intimate presence, rather than a detached, reportable event, adds a deeply personal dimension to her work.” (Room Magazine)
“… Evelyn Lau goes to a place deep within herself in Parade of Storms that can view Vancouver’s tent cities and found needles, the container ship stacked 'like a copper fort bricked against sky', the floods, the hospices, the wildfires, the Chinese lanterns, the motel lobby signs, the young man’s 'come-on in an elevator, the skies the colour of a peach Bellini, and make it all meaningful without offering any easy answers. It is a complex poetic vision designed for a complex world.” (The Woodlot)
“… Maybe the angels have no ears, but I certainly hear the clarity of Evelyn Lau’s arresting voice in Parade of Storms asking if the words, the words we carefully write, are worth more than the pound of flesh every honest poem or hard-won book takes from us. Lau doesn’t offer any easy answers, but the poems in this collection are tightly controlled, the images exacting, and they precariously balance the poet’s life experiences against the backdrop of ecological and human disasters we all face, which makes me able to write here that Lau’s experiences have given her the humility and the awe and the precision true poetry requires. …” (The Woodlot)
"Throughout this collection, Lau (Cactus Gardens) writes from a variety of speakers’ voices about the debris of our messy human experience: the relationships, the griefs, the final weeks of someone’s life, and the struggle to make sense of things, as well as the actual litter of our living in this world—the plastics, the Styrofoam, and the dumpster garbage. Lau’s Parade of Storms is mature, muscular writing, with a layered complexity that draws the reader in." (The BC Review)
ISBN: 9781772142457
Dimensions: 210mm x 133mm x 7mm
Weight: 100g
76 pages