Lost and Found Poet #4
Cheng Sait Chia: Chinese-Canadian Maritimer Imagist
Rediscovered by George Elliott Clarke
Cheng Sait Chia, the Singapore-born, Chinese immigrant whose spare, beautiful poetry should have placed her among the great Canadian imagists, alongside her fellow Maritimer John Thompson, published only one book posthumously, and has never been anthologized, not even in collections of work by Chinese-Canadians, East Coast poets, or Canadian women poets. Cheng died of cancer in 1981, at the age of 41, and her work, though infused by her illness with the theme of death, exhibits an exhilarating refusal of luxury, heroic stoicism, and a stern and bracing morbidity.
About Essayist George Elliott Clarke
George Elliott Clarke is the E.J. Pratt Professor of Canadian Literature at the University of Toronto. His critical study Odysseys Home: Mapping African-Canadian Literature (2002) helped to establish the field. Also a revered poet, his newest work is the opera libretto, Trudeau: Long March/Shining Path (2007). His earlier play-in-verse Whylah Falls (1990) was translated into Chinese and published in Beijing in 2006.
Arc 58, Summer 2007
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