Living Under Plastic
- Publisher
- Oolichan Books
- Initial publish date
- Apr 2010
- Category
- Canadian, Women Authors
- Recommended Age
- 16
- Recommended Grade
- 11
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9780889822627
- Publish Date
- Apr 2010
- List Price
- $17.95
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9780889825628
- Publish Date
- Apr 2010
- List Price
- $8.99
Classroom Resources
Where to buy it
Description
Living Under Plastic represents a major departure from the author’s previous poetry books. Instead of the obsessive focus on relationships and emotional damage that has characterized much of her earlier work, this book opens up to explore new subjects: family history, illness, death and dying, consumerism, and the natural world. In a tone that is often elegiac, without ever being maudlin, these poems are steeped in immortality and loss. Haunted by the pull of the past, there is strength of character and a sense of affirmation in all of these poems. While grounded in travel and in place, the tone is surprisingly meditative and contemplative.
About the author
Evelyn Lau has been publishing poetry and prose since she was thirteen. Now eighteen, she has her poetry appear in Prism International, Queen's Quarterly and Canadian Author and Bookman, among other literary magazines. Her prose has been published in MacLean's, Vancouver Magazine and The Antigonish Review. And she has won six awards for her poetry.
For two years, Evelyn lived on "the streets" in a world of drugs and prostitution recording these experiences in a journal. She left the streets in 1988 at the age of seventeen and extracts from this journal became the best-selling Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid, which stayed on bestseller lists across Canada for months.
Evelyn is now a freelance writer for the Province and the Globe and Mail as well as working on a collection of short stories. She lives in Vancouver.
Awards
- Short-listed, Pat Lowther Award
Librarian Reviews
Living Under Plastic
What better inspiration to young writers than Evelyn Lau, whose work was first published when she was in her teens. Although these poems are written from the perspective of maturity, they deal with the same concerns shared by younger people: love, loss, resentment —even anger. Poems in the first section are mostly concerned with death and dying, with a focus on the death of a relative about whom she cared deeply. The rest of the book contains clear and approachable poems about travel and animals with a memorable piece about being bitten by mosquitoes. There are some references to drugs and prostitution and an instance of scatological language (in a poem about sewage, so word choice is appropriate).This book won the 2011 Pat Lowther Memorial Award, League of Canadian Poets for best book of poetry by a woman.
Source: The Association of Book Publishers of BC. BC Books for BC Schools. 2011-2012.
