Yesterday I read at @Can0nF0dder, a great new night organised by @LilyBlacksell which asked poets to share work by writers sidelined by the "canon". My only thought about canons is that they should be fluid and strange and constantly reaching beyond themselves (1/6) https://twitter.com/Can0nF0dder/status/1194752419881791488

So I shared poem by Meiling Jin, a Guyanese poet of Chinese heritage who I wish I'd read when I was younger. Her only poetry collection, Gifts from My Grandmother, was published by Sheba Feminist Press in 1985. Here are two poems from that book (2/6)

I also shared a poem by Chinese-Singaporean poet Wong May – see thread – whose Wannsee Poems (from her 1978 collection Superstitions, currently out of print) totally changed the way I think about poem sequences. (3/6) https://twitter.com/soshunetwork/status/1106550841312493569

Meiling had poems in Watchers & Seekers, a crucial anthology ed. by Merle Collins & Rhonda Cobham, put out by the Women's Press in 1987. It includes work by Grace Nichols & John Agard but also so many others – Rita Anyiam-St John, Amryl Johnson, etc. - people won't know (4/6)

Canon-formation can reinforce the sense that literature is just another commodity – everything *new* *essential* *urgent* – but it can also show our essential unoriginality. As a way of reading it can be about forging new links rather than fetishising newness (5/6)

If you want to read/explore more, RAPAPUK have a great reading list here http://www.rapapuk.com/display-catalogue.html and @newbeaconbooks in Stroud Green - where @mamoyobornfree sometimes works! - is an amazing resource (6/6)