{"id":29453,"date":"2024-08-29T11:51:18","date_gmt":"2024-08-29T16:51:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metonymypress.com\/?p=29453"},"modified":"2024-09-03T14:59:34","modified_gmt":"2024-09-03T19:59:34","slug":"grace-kwans-the-sacred-heart-motel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/metonymypress.com\/fr\/grace-kwans-the-sacred-heart-motel\/","title":{"rendered":"Grace Kwan\u2019s The Sacred Heart Motel deals with grief, place and placelessness, and memory"},"content":{"rendered":"

listen; read because
\n<\/span><\/i>beauty was once a country\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

I belonged to now I\u2019m a migrant
\n<\/span><\/i>placeless and still hovering\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

on the limn trying on wages
\n<\/span><\/i>radium and high heels as a second language<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

debossed in cracked leather
\n<\/span><\/i>bleeding like citizens onto onion skin.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\u2014Grace Kwan (from \u201cGender Studies\u201d in <\/span><\/i>The<\/span> Sacred Heart Motel<\/span>)<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/span>Grace Kwan is <\/span>a Malaysian-born immigrant settler based in \u201cVancouver,\u201d the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. Their <\/span>first full-length poetry collection, <\/span>The<\/span><\/i> Sacred Heart Motel<\/span><\/i>, will be published by Metonymy Press in the Fall.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Sacred Heart Motel<\/span><\/i> is a memory palace that Kwan created by dividing their book into seven sections, all based on different parts of this imagined motel. In their words:<\/span><\/p>\n

The Sacred Heart Motel<\/span> is a rest stop where a wandering soul in search of belonging hovers between life and death. A heart is a hotel, a site of mystery and romance, a storied and placeless landmark, a point where people converge and ultimately disperse. These poems give life to a heart with no skin or ribcage, pummelling open air with ruthless vulnerability.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

They began this project by imagining it as a map, <\/span>\u201cfirst for myself, then for other wanderers who might also find themselves lost and looking for something they can’t find,\u201d Kwan told Metonymy Press. From there emerged the book\u2019s form: The Sacred Heart Motel<\/span>\u2014<\/span>a locationless place that takes form in the pages of this poetry collection.<\/span><\/p>\n

Kwan drew inspiration for their debut collection from <\/span>Heather O\u2019Neill\u2019s novel <\/span>The Lonely Hearts Hotel <\/span><\/i>and their fascination for \u201cthe romance of hotels and motels as sites where abstract ideas such as placelessness, haunting, and memory could be situated,\u201d they explained.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The author spent a lot of time on the road with their parents growing up, so the metaphor of <\/span>The Sacred Heart Motel <\/span><\/i>embodies, for them, the loneliness, wandering, and unbelonging that permeates the collection with every poem.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Among the many references in this book is a golden shovel after Ocean Vuong\u2019s famous quote, \u201cI might still be too young in my grief to know where it ends.\u201d Kwan\u2019s poem, entitled \u201cTsurune,\u201d starts like this:<\/span><\/p>\n

The pain demands I
\n<\/span><\/i>look up to a scene of might
\n<\/span><\/i>and beauty. I\u2019ve still<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

loved in rain, to be
\n<\/span><\/i>honest, its scent and veil too.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cTsurune\u201d is clearly in conversation with more than just this Vuong quote; it is reminiscent of his poetry about the loss of his mother and takes from the theme of grief in his work. Kwan says that they wrote this golden shovel as a way to process cutting off their parents while writing and editing <\/span>The Sacred Heart Motel<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Kwan immigrated to Vancouver in 2007, when they were eight years old. They write about their experiences from places they call home, but with the growing debate on what constitutes \u201cCanLit\u201d and \u201cthe Canadian canon,\u201d they don\u2019t feel that their work should be read only in conversation with CanLit writers. They added,<\/span><\/p>\n

I draw inspiration from sources too heterogeneous, varied, and global for me to feel okay with my work (and my own identity as a writer) being pinned to this category<\/span><\/i>\u2014<\/span><\/i>especially given my thematic preoccupation with diasporas and displacement, which upsets the very idea of Canadianness.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

CanLit is also often used to form an identity for a closed community of writers and can be weaponized by white scholars to devalue their students, Kwan mentioned.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

They recently earned their MA in sociology at Simon Fraser University and are planning on applying to be a PhD candidate in the next year. The thesis for their master\u2019s degree \u201c<\/span>explored Asian diasporic literature and cultural production as a site of identity formation,\u201d they explained. Kwan specified that their research has influenced their poetry as much as their poetry<\/span> has influenced their academic writing.<\/span><\/p>\n

When asked whom they hope to reach with<\/span> The Sacred Heart Motel<\/span><\/i>, Kwan answered that romantics, aesthetes, eldest immigrant daughters<\/span>, \u201cand anyone who has experienced displacement of any kind\u201d would find something for them in this collection. But even if you don\u2019t ascribe to any of these categories, you are still likely to appreciate Kwan\u2019s lyrical imagery and confessional poetry that makes readers question their own experiences and surroundings.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Photo by Lydia Taylor<\/figcaption><\/figure>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kwan\u2019s lyrical imagery and confessional poetry in Sacred Heart Motel makes readers question their own experiences and surroundings.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":533,"featured_media":29611,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"off","neve_meta_content_width":70,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[85],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books"],"yoast_head":"\nGrace Kwan\u2019s The Sacred Heart Motel deals with grief, place and placelessness, and memory - Metonymy Press<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Kwan\u2019s lyrical imagery and confessional poetry in Sacred Heart Motel makes readers question their own experiences and surroundings.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/metonymypress.com\/fr\/grace-kwans-the-sacred-heart-motel\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"fr_CA\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Grace Kwan\u2019s The Sacred Heart Motel deals with grief, place and placelessness, and memory - 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