New Books Network Jennifer Wong, "Light Year" (Nine Arches Press, 2025)
Apr 5, 2026
Jennifer Wong, a Hong Kong–born poet living in the UK, discusses her new collection Light Year. The conversation traces sea imagery, silence and memory. It touches on diaspora, motherhood, identity, microaggressions and the craft of compression and cinematic imagery. Light and translation recur as spaces between people.
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Sea Imagery Connects Hope And Identity
- Jennifer Wong frames the sea as a recurring image linking hope, memory, and self-reinvention across the collection.
- She ties Gatsby's “far light” and ocean imagery to longing, remaking identity, and transnational belonging in her poems.
Lean Into Compression To Carry Emotion
- Use poetry's compression to hold complex emotions—condense grief, joy, and memory into tightly packed lines.
- Wong says short poems suit her personality and force meaning into few lines, citing Sylvia Plath and Tess Gallagher as models.
Silence With Her Mother Became Poetic Fuel
- Wong recounts a year of silence when her mother stopped speaking to her during the pandemic, turning everyday memories into poetic material.
- She recalls peeled grapes, pharmacy trips in Hong Kong, and layered Indonesian cakes as anchors during the silence.
