Intimate Distances

by Fiona Tinwei Lam

A stunning first book from one of the Chinese-Canadian community's most insightful and grippingly honest young voices, Intimate Distances is a deep exploration of the vicissitudes of interpersonal connection and family relationships. Lam writes poignantly and vividly about her her father's early death during her childhood, the end of marriage, the gradual loss of her mother to Alzheimer's and, most recently, childbirth.

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2002

About the author

Fiona Tinwei Lam is the author of Intimate Distances (finalist for the City of Vancouver Book Award), Enter the Chrysanthemum, and the children’s book, The Rainbow Rocket. Her poetry, fiction and non-fiction have been published in over twenty anthologies (Canada, Hong Kong, and the US), including In Fine Form: The Anthology of Canadian Form Poetry and The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2010. Her work has been featured twice on local transit as part of B.C.’s Poetry in Transit, as well as aired on CBC Radio. Thrice short-listed for Event magazine’s literary non-fiction contest, she is a co-editor of and contributor to the creative non-fiction anthology, Double Lives: Writing and Motherhood published by McGill-Queen’s University Press. She also edited The Bright Well, a collection of contemporary Canadian poetry about facing cancer. Her poetry videos have been screened at poetry film festivals locally and internationally.

Born in Scotland, she emigrated to Canada at a young age with her family. She has a B.A. in political science (UBC), an LL.B. (Queen’s University) and an LL.M. (University of Toronto). She articled and worked as an associate in a Vancouver law firm, and later as a staff lawyer at the Law Society of British Columbia. She also has an M.F.A. in creative writing (UBC). She facilitates writing workshops for people of diverse ages, backgrounds and circumstances, including at UBC Continuing Studies and Langara Continuing Studies.

Reviews

[Christina Barber · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Intimate Distances” is Fiona Tinwei Lam’s debut poetry collection, published in 2002. Her autobiographical work paints her experiences from childhood to adulthood, her journey from the child’s perspective to that of being a mother herself. Poignant and real, her depictions of the difficulties of familial relationships, the loss of a parent, another to Alzheimer’s, her poetry is both accessible and highly relatable.

Two poems stand out for me, “Neighbourhood” for its metaphorical depiction of our techno-centric reality and “Loop”, a surreal and lyric palindromic poem.

[April · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here, words magically assemble to bare all, and I am awed, devastated.

“The poems are explosive—the family in shards, which the book patiently pieces together. The combination is fascinating. I learned something too: that the mystery of this remarkable family (and possibly of all families) is that each birth, each repetition with a difference, is the rebirth of the whole.” (Roo Borson on the back of the book)

[Nathalie Santos · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book often in quiet contemplation and I find myself returning to Lam's words from time-to-time. I would describe this book as a very open-text poetry experience for myself -- you will find words you drift back to over time.