Ouyang Yu's 'Fainting with Freedom' features on three 'Best of 2015' lists

It is with great pride that we see Ouyang Yu's superb collection Fainting with Freedom featuring on three 'Best of 2015' lists from the following readers:Authors on the Readings bookstore website.John Kinsella in ABR:'Ouyang Yu's work continues to astonish me with its shifts and range, and Fainting with Freedom (Five Islands Press) is among his finest work.'Alex Miller in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian:'Deceptively simple and direct, Ouyang Yu's language in Fainting with Freedom (5 Islands Press) challenges and mystifies, leading us into dark places where sudden shafts of understanding engulf us. Wisdom and beauty speak side by side here. It is poetry of a double voice arising from two equal languages. His brilliant insights are directed towards the self, his own self, the most devastating and the most revealing of them leading to something that is the nature of his own truth. It is a rich truth in which the Australian he has become is brother to the Chinese soul from which the deepest tones of his unique voice are sounded. The freedom of the title is a dangerous and a sublime place for this poet. Ouyang's is a poetry that never strains after its own centre but leaves a silence rich in meaning and even menace, and always of mystery, like the still centre of a storm, where the sense of his words is held in that perfection we call poetry, the silence between the words. An utterly satisfying collection. Some of the finest poetry ever written in this country. What is most absurd is most often where Yu finds his eloquence, his inspiration arising from a place of contradiction and profound empathy. This is his most powerful collection yet.'Fainting with Freedom can be purchased here.