Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud, Lee Murray, The Cuba Press, 2024

Begin with a fox girl.
Begin with nine dutiful wives.
Begin with a departure from the land of jade to the land of cloud.
Move to you and you and you, the nine-tailed fox spirit, the húli jīng.
Continue with the new arrival woman, the new arrival adrift.
And it is she and she and she.
And it is the fox choosing, and it is the woman speaking.

And here we are in an evocation of Chinese women, women of the Chinese diaspora, women who are owned displaced muted with neither familiar ground nor kinship. Lee has used the figure of the nine-tailed fox to narrate nine women who are framed by the appearances of the fox. We listen to the mothers and daughters, girls and women, listen to them speaking out of struggle and despair, the hope flickering, the different versions piercingly similar. Listening, so very important, that we are listening.

This is the mother working her fingers to the bone: “only you will see the silent click of her tongue and the bitter taste of her unquiet”.
And it is the wife coiled in drudgery, the relentless routine, deferred and elusive dreamings, the social hubs existing elsewhere.
And it is sadness and subjugation and shapeshifting fox.

What a heart embracing collection this is. Such writing poise. Every line sings out with linguistic freshness, a feast of visual and aural conjunctions: “your heart shrivels to a rotting black walnut, the sweet sonata halts”. Every musical phrase leading to the jagged edge of living: “apples and flutes will always be parallel lines”. Every lyrical cadence twisting the blade: “the girl is a typhoon of want, a perfect symphony of longing”.

Lee draws upon: “the invisible Chinese fox women who came to make there home here in Aotearoa, who trod this cloud-land before me and who lived and died and suffered in these pages, though you are many and nameless, I want to thank you for allowing me to slip on your skulls, share in your lives and give voice to your stories.” from ‘Acknowledgements’

In her ‘Author note’, Lee admits the “poetry-prose work has been one of the most difficult pieces of writing I have ever completed, possibly because I was writing it during the global pandemic and was plagued with interruptions and anxiety, but also because as a New Zealand-born Chinese Pākehā, the tragedy of these narratives filled me with sadness and anger.”

Indeed. And out of this difficulty, out of this complicated and resonant stretch into the personal and the imagined, Lee has produced an extraordinary collection, a chorus of voices that will unsettle and unnerve and are utterly necessary to be heard. This is a book to be shared.

A reading

Photo credit: Maree Wilkinson

Lee reads from Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud

A conversation

What are three or four key words for you when you write poetry?

Thank you for this illuminating question, which has had me thinking on process and purpose and the philosophy of poetry for a couple of hours now. For me, whether a poem focuses on a brief reflection or complex narrative, whether it is contemporary, historical or even speculative, formal or free, a single line or a novel-length epic, poems that resonate do so because they incite some feeling or deep emotion in the reader. There is an element of recognition and understanding, some shared insight into the human condition that is apparent even if the subject matter is foreign to us. So my four key words might be:

Truth.
Heart.
Connection.
Solace.

What gave you particular joy when you wrote this new collection? Or challenge?

The joy has been in the kind reaction from readers and reviewers. As writers, we’re rarely satisfied with our work, typically full of angst about its not-enoughness, and Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud is such a strange little collection, one that is very hard to categorise, so I have been especially antsy! Is it fiction or non-fiction? Poetry or prose? As for the challenges (other than settling on a suitable classification for booksellers), Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud has been the hardest thing I have ever written, which I admit in my author’s note:

While it seemed a simple enough objective when conceived, this prose-poetry work has been one of the most difficult pieces of writing I have ever completed, possibly because I was writing it during the global pandemic and was plagued with interruptions and anxiety, but also because as a New Zealand-born Pākehā-Chinese, the tragedy of these narratives filled me with sadness and anger. At times, I was stricken with writer’s block, something which has never happened to me before. My words were clumsy and insufficient, and I was overwhelmed with a strange responsibility for the women whose lives inspired these narratives. It struck me that it was only through a twist of time and fortune that I was not one of them. More than once, I was reminded to be grateful for the gifts of my grandmother, Wai-Fong, a Shanghai-born refugee, and my mother Pauline, a New Zealand-born Chinese—two incredible women who stepped carefully and also boldly, creating a path for me, so that I might thrive.

Have you read any poetry books in last year or so that have struck a chord? Or books that nourished you as you wrote the collection?

I read a lot of poetry books, so this is hard! However, two poetry books which spoke to me deeply while I was writing Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud include Anxiety of Words: Contemporary Poetry by Korean Women (2006) by Ch’oe Sŭng-ja, Kim Hyesoon, and Yi Yŏn-ju (translated by Don Mee Choi), a groundbreaking collection of poems by three Korean poets who tell of lives shaped by tradition and expectation. Intimate and insightful. I also loved the truths, domestic and universal, revealed in Marge Piercy’s collection On the Way Out, Turn Off the Light (Alfred A. Knopf, 2020). Another book which nourished me that is not classified as poetry by its author, but which comprises prose so gorgeously lyrical that it may as well be, was L.E. Daniels’ novel Serpent’s Wake: A Tale for the Bitten (2018). It’s a kind of metaphorical fairytale for adults written as a means of processing trauma, a work that encapsulates that list of four words that epitomise poetry for me—truth, heart, connection, and solace—and which has become one of my favourite books of all time. Poetry books released in the last year which have struck a chord include Grace Yee’s powerful Ockham Award-winning collection Chinese Fish and Madeleine Slavick’s fabulous homage to small-town Aotearoa, Town. And for emerging writers looking for a way into poetry or established poets in need of a refresh, I highly recommend Writing Poetry in the Dark (2022), a collection of essays on writing into the wound edited by Bram Stoker Award-winning poet Stephanie M. Wytovich.

Lee Murray is a third-generation Chinese New Zealander and multi-award-winning author, poet and anthology editor. She has been awarded the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement for Fiction 2023 and been made an NZSA Honorary Literary Fellow. The manuscript of Fox Spirit on a Distant Cloud won Lee the Grimshaw–Sargeson Fellowship at the development stage and the NZSA Laura Solomon Cuba Press Prize when it was complete. She’s won five Bram Stoker Awards, awarded by the international Horror Writers Association. Lee lives in the Bay of Plenty with her husband and son.

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