Wok Hei: Aphrodisiac poems and recipes in The Year of the Wood Dragon
editor Renee Liang, Intro Chris Tse
Monster Fish Publishing, 2024
contact: docrnz@gmail.com

                               whatever’s lacking or lost, you’ll find
                               among the ginger and the spring onion

                               Chris Tse, from ‘Warming’

Wok Hei: Aphrodisiac poems and recipes is a slender chapbook edited by poet Renee Laing, introduced by Poet Laureate Chris Tse, and published with the support of National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa.

Like Renee and Chris, I love cooking and I love writing poetry. Can we lay claim to the power of both food and poems to nourish heart and body? Poetry certainly activates my reading taste buds. Both food and poetry might have roots in tradition and tendrils in innovation. And I embrace that wholeheartedly.

In his introduction Chris writes: ‘Like poetry, food is best when it is shared with others, whether they’re new friends or family. I love reading about food as much as I do cooking and eating it. I love learning about other people’s family traditions and recipes, and tracing the history of how different foods and cuisines traverse the globe and evolve over generations.’

Renee introduces the practice of ‘wok hei’: ‘Wok hei translates a breath of the wok: a method evolved by cooks in Southern China to bring out the aromas and natural flavours of ultra-fresh ingredients.’ She then makes a connection between bringing out the taste and flavours of super fresh ingredients and writing poetry: ‘In many ways, this is what a poet does too: selecting the best words by applying their knowledge of its properties; marrying harmonious flavours together; balancing textures’.

The chapbook includes recipes (almond cookies, claypot rice, crispy roast pork, steamed whole fish, tong sun fun, cocktails) alongside poems that are steeped in flavour. The contents page is a menu, indicating the reading will be a form of meal. I am picturing the shared table, my taste buds pop as I read.

Ah. I am picturing a suite of chapbooks like Wok Hei that draw upon the food and poetry of the various cultures and homes of Aotearoa, that we may sit and share recipes, traditions, the flavour of words along with the comfort of cumin, the tang of verbs alongside the sweetness of honey. This book is a satisfying meal indeed.

afternoon sun spills in
lighting the faces around the table
all of us here because of these two,
enjoying the last crumbs of fortune cookies for the day,
the golden sky.

Renee Liang, from ‘Fortune Cookies’

Note from Renee

The poets are: Chris Tse, Lynda Chanwai-Earle, Cadence Chung, Nathan Joe, Maddie Ballard, Lee Murray, and myself.

The chefs are: Sam Low, Jennifer Yee Collinson, Shirley Ng, Eddie Lowe and Geoff Ngan. Cover design by Eric Ngan. 

Chris didn’t just write the introduction, he was also my sounding board for the curation and also personally helped assemble the books in the basement of the National Library before the reading (!), along with Lynda Chawai-Earle and her daughter.

We deliberately decided to include poets of Chinese (not Pan-Asian) descent – in line with the poets assembled by Chris for a reading at the National Library to celebrate the Chinese New Year of the Dragon, the most auspicious year of the 12 year cycle. I felt this occasion couldn’t go by without a permanent object so this sparked the idea to make the book. The reading was on the 14 February, midway into the two week celebration period, but since it was also Valentine’s Day I decided to use the theme of love – which in Chinese culture is often expressed through the making of special dishes. 

The chefs represent generations of diasporic food makers – Shirley Ng for example ran multiple restaurants in Akl in the 1970s-90s, as did Eddie Lowe in Chch,  while Jennifer Collinson and Sam Low are well known food commentators currently and known for their ‘translational’ work. The cocktails are from Tim Soh whom I met at a party making cocktails for fun for us – he is a ‘keen amateur’ but very much in the tradition of fusion and relationship to tradition and family. Geoff Ngan is a well known Wellington restauranteur but chose to gift us a humble family recipe because that was the one most important to him. 

Likewise the poets were chosen to represent different ‘generations’ of the arts community with Lynda being an established rangatira, myself, Lee, Chris and Nathan being mid career, and Cadence, Maddy and Vera rising stars. They are also chosen to represent different regions ( Nathan- Chch, Vera – Northland ). And we are all from slightly different migration waves ( Chris and Nathan are multigenerational from Southern China, I am second generation from Hong Kong, Vera is a recent migrant from mainland China and wrote her poem when she was visiting family back there).

Of course, as happens with tight knit communities there are many lines of connection between the participants. Two literary ones you might be delighted by: Kim Lowe, Eddie’s daughter, did the cover design for Lee Murray’s Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud ( just released from Cuba press). And Chris and I first worked together when I took my first play, Lantern, to Wellington back in 2005

Renee Liang