Evelyn Lau – författare

Pineapple Express is Evelyn Lau's eighth collection of poetry. The collection is rooted in the mind and its disorders. Depression, anxiety, and obsessive thinking have been explored widely in fiction and non-fiction, much less so in poetry. "Pineapple Express" explores moods, medications and side effects, capturing the flatness of depression while making the language sing. It also explores the notion of mid-life, in all its manifestations: physical changes, psychological upheaval, the notion of becoming "invisible," and mortality.

Set against a backdrop of shifting weather and a blasted, mysterious landscape, Cactus Gardens explores the complexity and intensity of personal relationships. The narrator drifts through a variety of locales, from a hospital ward to a lakefront hotel, a downtown condo, and restaurant patios, depicting friendships that are as meaningful and volatile as romantic entanglements. The final section deals with the fallout of a disastrous relationship the author had with a much older, established writer. After publishing an essay about their relationship, Lau was filed with a lawsuit and subjected to intense media scrutiny, resulting in years of self-doubt and a complete retreat from prose writing. After feeling muzzled for years, she returned to poetry and found solace in the idea of the strength that arises from trauma. She was finally able to re-examine and write about the complicated relationship, excavating its tangle of memories and emotions. Those poems now form the final section of this book, The Salton Sea. Cactus Gardens is Evelyn Lau's ninth collection of poetry.

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.