Time Out Bookstore has a terrific poetry selection. I have invited Frances Libeau, the poetry buyer, to feature a poetry book every now and then.
Perennial Counterpart
Yongyu Chen
Nightboat Books, New York, 2026
86 pp. $43
Timeout Chen page
When the right person is next to me I can see the abyss.
from ‘Pasolini and Callas’
Perennial Counterpart is a tender and erudite collection from Chen that – as its title might suggest – considers perception of and relationship with others across time and place. Through epistolary commune with myriad others (friends, writers, texts), Chen teases out how the self refracts through these prismatic relationships that bind the author to their world. While Chen has an enduring commitment to the lyric, they deftly push at the limits of the form, destabilising their inquiry through carefully sculpted rupture and fragmentation.
the next language could be not a language of images
but an image of language, of what it means to have an idea in language, in other people, intimacy. — I said to my friend just now,
the best place to put a crystal is writing.
from ‘Tombpetals’
In less attentive hands this could come off as cold: yet the intimacy of Chen’s lines is never burdened by their cerebral load. The book hangs in an elegant balance that is measured in pace, ambitious in scope and persistently disarming in its lyrical turns.
[…] In a dream
my family photos were taped onto photos
of the distant star and then, as the dream
reached its point of inflection, I realized the star could see us
through our backsides, and,
somehow, S was part of it, S was part of the dream, then part
of the star, part of the seeing
from ‘Theory of Mesh’
Frances Libeau is an interdisciplinary artist, writer and bookseller based in Tāmaki Makaurau. Recent publications include Min-a-rets 15 (Compound Press, 2025) and Radicant (Hocken Collections, 2025). They work part-time at Time Out Books and order in a selection of poetry titles for the store.
