Jennifer Wong

Jennifer Wong was born and raised in Hong Kong and now based in the UK. She earned an MA in creative writing at the University of East Anglia and earned a creative writing PhD at Oxford Brookes University. Wong is the author of three poetry collections including 回家 Letters Home (Nine Arches Press, 2020), which was the PBS Spring 2020 Wild Card Choice. She has taught creative writing at Poetry School, Oxford Brookes University, City Lit and was writer in residence at Wasafiri in 2021. She is a visiting fellow at Oxford TORCH for 2022.

Itinerary

I don’t mind the ring roads
or the strange intersections,

filled in with radio music tarmac
skirting streetlight and the dissolving moon.

Wing mirrors tell
of running trees.

My heart races
in the heave of the wind.

In the pivot of glass everything
is so small and manageable.

I think of an old song,
of purple cows in far fields,

I wonder what it’d take
to cover miles and miles
with no maps or destination.

It is not easy anymore

to forget or be free of the bear
that roams the place where I come from.