Guidelines: Malaysia & Indonesia, 1999

by Ariel Gordon

Ariel Gordon’s Guidelines: Malaysia & Indonesia, 1999 explores what it means to ground oneself in landscape and family. These prose poems vividly chronicle the journey undertaken by two sisters to reconcile with their family’s past, and, over the course of their travels, with each other. A truly beautiful collection by a talented writer, this chapbook strikes a delicate balance between understanding the past and moving forward with strength into the future.

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Ariel Gordon (she/her) is a Winnipeg/Treaty 1 territory-based writer, editor, and enthusiast. She is the ringleader of Writes of Spring, a National Poetry Month project with Plume Winnipeg that appears in the Winnipeg Free Press. She is the author of seven books, the most recent of which are the essay collection Fungal: Foraging in the Urban Forest (Wolsak & Wynn, 2024) and the epistolary spec-fic novel Blood Letters, co-authored with graphic novelist GMB Chomichuk (Great Plains Press, 2025). Her work appeared in Best Canadian Essays 2025, edited by Emily Urquhart, and will be in Best Canadian Poetry 2026, edited by Mary Dalton.