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Eileen Chong is a contemporary Singaporean-born Australian poet.

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Eileen Chong
Born	1980 Singapore
Occupation	Poet

Career

Chong studied English language and literature at the National Institute of Education in Singapore and went on to teach literature at a secondary school.[1][2] After moving to Sydney, and finding out that her qualifications were not recognised, she undertook a Masters of Letters at the University of Sydney.[2][3] Chong was awarded the Poets Union Youth Fellowship in 2010.[3] After taking a poetry class with Judith Beveridge, she started writing poetry in earnest in 2009.

In 2011-12, Chong was an Australian Poetry Fellow, which led to the publication of her first book Burning Rice.[3] This book was the first poetry collection by an Asian-Australian poet to be on the New South Wales’ English syllabus for the Higher School Certificate from 2019-2023.[3]

Chong was the poet-in-residence at the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney and the Bundanon Trust in 2016.[4][5]

Chong's collection Painting Red Orchids was shortlisted for the Prime Minister's Literary Awards.[6]

In 2019 her collection Rainforest (Pitt Street Poetry) was shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Literary Awards, Multicultural Award.[3][7]

Personal life

Chong was born in 1980, in Singapore of Hakka, Hokkien, and Peranakan descent and grew up speaking English, Mandarin and Hokkien.[8][9] Eileen said of her upbringing and its influence on themes in her writing: "To paraphrase Wittgenstein, the limits of the world I grew up in were very much defined by the language of food. Ancestor worship and veneration centred around food offerings; my grandparents and parents certainly never told me they loved me when I was growing up, but they would ask if I was hungry, and they would do whatever it took to feed me, and they fed me well."[10][11]

She migrated to Sydney, Australia in 2007.[12]

Selected bibliography

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• Burning Rice (single-author poetry collection). Chong, Eileen. 2012. Australian Poetry New Voices Series 2012, Melbourne, Australia. Reprinted 2013. Pitt Street Poetry, Sydney, Australia.
• Peony (single-author poetry collection). Chong, Eileen. 2014. Pitt Street Poetry, Sydney, Australia.
• Painting Red Orchids (single-author poetry collection). Chong, Eileen. 2016. Pitt Street Poetry, Sydney, Australia.
• Another Language (single-author selected poems). Chong, Eileen. Foreword by Paul Kane. 2017. George Braziller, New York City, USA
• The Uncommon Feast (single-author essays, poems, and recipes). Chong, Eileen. 2018. Introduction by Judith Beveridge. Illustrations by Colin Cassidy. Recent Work Press, Canberra, Australia.
• Rainforest (single-author poetry collection). Chong, Eileen. 2018. Pitt Street Poetry, Sydney, Australia.
• Map-Making (collaborative limited edition hardcover book). Poems by Chong, Eileen. Photographs by Winfred, Charlene. 2018. Potts Point Press, Sydney, Australia.
• Dark Matter (single-author poetry chapbook). Chong, Eileen. 2018. International Poetry Studies Institute, with Recent Work Press, Canberra, Australia.
• A Thousand Crimson Blooms (single-author poetry collection). Chong, Eileen. 2021. University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, Australia.

References

External links

• Interview with Chong by Robert Wood in Liminal
• Interview with Chong at Djed Press
• Chong's poems at Glasgow Review of Books
• Eileen Chong on beauty and truth: a poetics of resistance at Writing NSW

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