REPOSE (Wendy’s Subway, 2024)
“Early on in Amelia Zhou’s Repose, the speaker asks the reader “do all lost things live in ruins?” Ruins—as in aftermath, as in refuse, as in the rotting and wilted physical landscape—permeate this deft and roving collection of poems. Zhou’s work rests in the fleeting space of bodies in motion, the friction of bodies troubling and inhabiting spaces across planes and distances. Zhou does not attempt to still the movement. Instead, she allows it to fold and create its own repetitions, logic, and accord. All along the way, Zhou opens up a space for the spectral to exist alongside the ruins. Towards the end of Repose, she writes “All that distinguishes is a reminder there is something still from the secret, accreting.” In this way, Repose loops, billows, and folds on itself. With the patience that permeates this entire collection, Zhou simply makes a notation of this accretion and demands nothing else of it. Go slow, this collection suggests and with Zhou guiding us, we can.” — Asiya Wadud
Repose was the 2022 Open Reading Period Book Prize winner, selected by guest judge Asiya Wadud.
US: https://wendyssubway.com/publishing/titles/repose/
UK: https://www.antennebooks.com/product/repose/
Selected previous
○ DECISION (pamphlet), Slow Loris/Puncher & Wattmann, 2024
○ Images, FENCE (41), 2024
○ The Souvenir: On Antigone Kefala, Liminal Magazine, 2024
○ Book of September, Liminal Magazine, 2023
○ Chained pastoral, Ambit (246), 2022
○ Bright. Awarded Gold Prize - Prose at the Creative Future Writers' Awards, 2021. Republished in the anthology Everything, All At Once (Ultimo Press, 2021).
○ Three poems in LUMIN Journal (4), 2021
○ Mouth piece, Overland (244), 2021
○ This is where you hear the echo, ‘Tell Me Like You Mean It’ (4) digital chapbook (Cordite Poetry Review), 2020
○ Three poems in Datableed (13), 2020
○ Ghost within the ghost, Gutter Magazine (21), 2020
○ Body double, Rabbit Poetry Journal (29), 2019
Performing arts criticism for Running Dog, Australian Book Review, Peril.
“Early on in Amelia Zhou’s Repose, the speaker asks the reader “do all lost things live in ruins?” Ruins—as in aftermath, as in refuse, as in the rotting and wilted physical landscape—permeate this deft and roving collection of poems. Zhou’s work rests in the fleeting space of bodies in motion, the friction of bodies troubling and inhabiting spaces across planes and distances. Zhou does not attempt to still the movement. Instead, she allows it to fold and create its own repetitions, logic, and accord. All along the way, Zhou opens up a space for the spectral to exist alongside the ruins. Towards the end of Repose, she writes “All that distinguishes is a reminder there is something still from the secret, accreting.” In this way, Repose loops, billows, and folds on itself. With the patience that permeates this entire collection, Zhou simply makes a notation of this accretion and demands nothing else of it. Go slow, this collection suggests and with Zhou guiding us, we can.” — Asiya Wadud
Repose was the 2022 Open Reading Period Book Prize winner, selected by guest judge Asiya Wadud.
US: https://wendyssubway.com/publishing/titles/repose/
UK: https://www.antennebooks.com/product/repose/
Selected previous
○ DECISION (pamphlet), Slow Loris/Puncher & Wattmann, 2024
○ Images, FENCE (41), 2024
○ The Souvenir: On Antigone Kefala, Liminal Magazine, 2024
○ Book of September, Liminal Magazine, 2023
○ Chained pastoral, Ambit (246), 2022
○ Bright. Awarded Gold Prize - Prose at the Creative Future Writers' Awards, 2021. Republished in the anthology Everything, All At Once (Ultimo Press, 2021).
○ Three poems in LUMIN Journal (4), 2021
○ Mouth piece, Overland (244), 2021
○ This is where you hear the echo, ‘Tell Me Like You Mean It’ (4) digital chapbook (Cordite Poetry Review), 2020
○ Three poems in Datableed (13), 2020
○ Ghost within the ghost, Gutter Magazine (21), 2020
○ Body double, Rabbit Poetry Journal (29), 2019
Other
Performing arts criticism for Running Dog, Australian Book Review, Peril.