Cycling with the Dragon is a personal investigation of family,love, culture, self, and the helpless feeling of "smallness." Elaine Woo's poems take the form of the words that they speak: she forms an "o" for the buoy that is a child's safety-raft (found in the solitude of a notebook and Harriet the Spy), and weaves a poem about fearing snakes and dreams into a descending slither.

Woo's poems weave meaning with form, writing in a pastiche of diverse poetic voices who are small by virtue of age or status (be they women, children, ethnic minorities or the creatures of nature). And like tenacious seeds they break through to reach the sun, to face an abusive parent, bullies, the pain of shyness, envy, or racism.

Elaine Woo is a poet, artist, and librettist. Her second poetry collection, Put Your Hand in Mine (Signature Editions, 2019), follows her debut book, Cycling with the Dragon (Nightwood Editions, 2014). Her work appears in Elephant Journal, EVENT, Prism International, Grain, ARC, carte blanche, Otoliths, S/tick and h&. Also, she is a contributor to the anthologies, Veils, Halos, & Shackles: International Poetry on the Oppression & Empowerment of Women, Shy, V6A: Writing from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, and The Enpipe Line: 70,000+ kilometres of poetry written in resistance to the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipelines proposal. Elaine's art song collaboration with Daniel Marshall, "Night-time Symphony," won a Boston Metro Opera festival prize, 2013. Born in Saskatchewan, she resides on British Columbia's west coast.

Elaine Woo's profile page

Cycling with the Dragon excites by bringing the large scale of mythologies and the pathos of the human condition down to the micro, personal level...Woo's work is unflinching, confronting difficulty head-on by diving repeatedly into childhood traumas, the failures of desire on both personal and societal levels, contemplations on pregnancy and motherhood and the broader socioeconomic concerns of today's world...Her images are lively and colourful, even when the subject matter is dark or difficult....worthwhile and daring."
--Kerri Lu, Asian Cha

"Cycling with the Dragon, Elaine Woo's debut poetry collection, collapses the gap between eco-commentary and socio-cultural exploration. Woo's graceful poetics balance rhythmic lyricism with fragmentation, familial tensions with racial visibilities, and bodily meditations with environmental reflections. Above everything else, Cycling with the Dragon is an honest and perceptive collection that burns with conscience."
--Jordan Abel, author of The Place of Scraps, winner of the 2014 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize

"Cycling With Dragon is a swift ride through the generations, and a sensitive hand along the edge of the sea. Elaine Woo offers up suggestive images--like a heron poised on the edge of the sink, she is selective and discriminating. Writing from the centre of the universe, her poetic vision snakes around the mythic wealth of the world, interrogating the interstices, offering it up to us again and again in sharp glimpses."
--Joanne Arnott, author of A Night for the Lady and Wiles of Girlhood, winner of the 1992 Gerald Lampert Award

"The surface of these delicate poems belie a perceptive edge, a crooked finger in the lines that draw you in deeper, to a subtle sound exploration. Cycling with the Dragon is the best kind of poetic travel, to see a place anew, to experience life from a different angle. Woo excels in the shy surprise. These are small marvels, rewarding a return journey."
--Renee Saklikar, author of Children of Air India, winner of the 2014 CAA Award for Poetry

"Elaine Woo's book is a work of bravery."
--Ray Hsu, author of Cold Sleep Permanent Afternoon and Anthropy, winner of the 2005 Gerald Lampert Award and finalist for the 2005 Trillium Award for Poetry