Written in both Mandarin and English, the poems act as simple propositions about love, money, sex, morality and selfhood that flip, slip & mutate over and over, until the joke becomes philosophical. Then back again.

An example from the photos here, the “Dreaming is free / So I am a millionaire” is more or less the operating principle — language reduced to such apparent simplicity that it becomes absurd. 

Qu is an artist as much as a poet, across all of her practice is this sense of humour, contradiction, linguistic slippage. She explores how intimacy becomes wordplay, cliché becomes structure, sincerity keeps slipping into satire and back again. The bilingual presentation makes that doubleness literal, with English and Mandarin facing each other across the page rather than one being treated as the invisible original. It’s funny in the dry, sideways way that makes you briefly suspect you’ve been insulted by a three-line poem. 

No More Poetry, Naarm/Melbourne, 2021. First edition of 225 numbered copies; bilingual Mandarin/English softcover, 216 pages, 108 × 178 mm. Very good condition with only light handling wear.