Love is language, and longing is translation.

Fragments, Desire is a dictionary of love, exploring its troubled and joyous borders with honesty and originality. Taking inspiration from Roland Barthes' A Lover's Discourse, Onjana Yawnghwe reimagines and transforms it while paying homage to the beloved work.

Fragments, Desire intertwines adoration of language with romantic longing. Here, stanzas become secret rooms and we get lost in the closing and opening of the chambers of the heart. The book murmurs down doorways; its pages breathe the desires we glimpse in dreams.

Onjana Yawnghwe was born in Thailand but is a part of the Shan people from Burma (Myanmar). She grew up in Vancouver and received a MA in English from UBC. Her poems have been featured in numerous anthologies and journals, including The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2011, 4 Poets, CV2, Room, and The New Quarterly. She was also awarded the Vancouver Mayor's Arts Award for Emerging Literary Artist in 2012. She was a co-founder of Fish Magic, a micro press specializing in limited-run, hand-made chapbooks and was co-editor of Xerography, a little literary journal. Onjana currently works as a nurse in mental health and has completed a book-length biography-in-poems about Buster Keaton. More of her projects can be found at www.onjana.com.

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