The First Time I Ate Saury

Fish Lu’s this chapbook shows a distinct stance:

• He starts from daily detail but refuses to remain at mere record, estranging and transforming life into poetry or absurdity.

• In writing family and memory, he blends the real and the imagined, keeping figures between reality and symbol.

• His minimalist language opens deep spaces of thought in brief lines.

• His poems of love convey quiet, genuine intimacy, turning poetry into a witness of everyday life.

Fish Lu’s writing therefore has a dual quality: rooted in the everyday yet constantly making it strange; familiar yet dreamlike. His poems are like transparent vessels holding reality, illusion, absurdity, and philosophy, leaving the reader both close and distant. This tension is the charm of his poetry.

Although only a chapbook, it presents the foundations of Fish Lu’s writing and his exploratory openness. As a writer, his defining trait is restlessness with fixed forms, always searching between life and language for new possibilities.

— Xi Nan & Fish Lu STUDIO, London
21 September, 2025