Winner of the Costa Poetry Award 2019

Much like the fencer who must constantly read and respond to her opponent’s tactics during a fencing bout, this debut collection by Mary Jean Chan deftly examines relationships at once conflictual and tender.Fleche (the French word for ‘arrow’) is an offensive technique commonly used in epee, a competitive sport of the poet’s teenage and young adult years. This cross-linguistic pun presents the queer, non-white body as both vulnerable (‘flesh’) and weaponised (‘fleche’) in public and private spaces. Themes of multilingualism, queerness, post-colonialism, psychoanalysis and cultural history emerge by means of an imagined personal, maternal and national biography, spoken by a polyphony of female voices.The result is a series of poems that are urgent and hard-hitting as Chan keeps her readers on their toes, dazzling and devastating them by turn.