Blood Belies
Ellen Chang-Richardson
April 2, 2024
136 PAGES | ISBN 978-1-989496-87-9
**Longlisted for the 2025 Gerald Lampert Memorial Award**
In this arresting debut collection Ellen Chang-Richardson writes of race, of injury and of belonging in stunning poems that fade in and out of the page. History swirls through this collection like a summer storm, as they bring their father’s, and their own, stories to light, writing against the background of the institutional racism of Canada, the Chinese Exclusion Act, the head tax and more. From Taiwan in the early 1990s to Oakville in the late 1990s, Toronto in the 2010s, Cambodia in the mid-1970s and Ottawa in the 2020s, Blood Belies takes the reader through time, asking them what it means to look the way we do? To carry scars? To persevere? To hope?
Advance Praise
“I have never read a poetry collection that is grounded in landscape as distinctly as Blood Belies, Ellen Chang-Richardson’s incisive, frank and gorgeous book. These poems probe at all the landscapes that haunt us – the landscapes of emotion, of trauma, of spaces external and internal – and do so with a precise voice that is sometimes quiet and sometimes roaring to be heard. I am in awe of Ellen’s talent and the small, poetic droplets of truth that have coalesced into this revelation of a book.” – Jen Sookfong Lee, author of Superfan and The Shadow List
“Blood Belies is a remarkable collection that explores proximity and the inevitable spaces found within and between histories, lands, truth and ourselves. Thrilling in its fragmentary style, Blood Belies grapples with race, identity and family as the poet seeks out a new lexicon amidst the Canadian snowdrifts and archives. With every ‘like:,’ ‘like:,’ ‘like:,’ Ellen Chang-Richardson folds the reader closer and closer into a world where ‘memory, / has a way / of skewing,’ where stories are told, untold, retold; where poetry is a language for survival. Chang-Richardson’s voice is at once intimate, perceptive and unforgettable.” – Gillian Sze, author of Quiet Night Think
“Blood Belies explores fraught counterpoints between surface and depth, exposing enduring histories of racism and environmental neglect. In a fluid carousel of text, disruption, white space, image and narrative, Chang-Richardson’s urgent, inventive structures react to and subvert received hypocrisy, where each fugitive subtext weaves fracture into art.” – David O’Meara, author of Masses on Radar
Reviews
Review of Ellen Chang-Richardson’s “Blood Belies” (Frances Boyle, Freefall Magazine, 06/10/2024)
"A book’s larger scope allows for expanded and even elongated explorations of these topics and the connections between them. Minimalism and visual elements increase the impact of the writing. Incorporating silences and the visual equivalent of static between stations on a dial, Chang-Richardson’s poems move between the overtly political and the familial, interweaving the two."
Ellen Chang-Richardson's Blood Belies (Jérôme Melançon, the /tƐmz/ Review, 04/10/2024)
"Beyond its beauty and its ability to be cherished as a material and spiritual object, Blood Belies leaves us with the freedom to notice our own fragmentation, and so to see ourselves differently, as its author let themself do."
Blood Belies (Sarah Hailstone, Sarah Hailstone, 19/07/2024)
"Ellen Chang-Richardson’s debut poetry collection, Blood Belies, gives testimony to a timeline of anti-Asian sentiment throughout Canadian history. Written in the style of fluctuation between verse and concrete poetry, Chang-Richardson succeeds in making meaning of the literal page, encroaching spaces and missing text, their writing style echoes of feeling, an experiential living in Canada as an 'other.'"
Memory's Hauntings Permeate Words, Space (melanie brannagan frederiksen, Winnipeg Free Press, 25/05/2024)
"In this singular collection, Chang-Richardson scores the page with line, punctuation and blank space to hold a range of experiences: family and national histories, racism, illness and injury."
Bearing Witness: Review of Ellen Chang-Richardson's Blood Belies (Bridget Huh, canthius: feminism & literary arts, 22/05/2024)
"What we remember, after all, depends on the stories we tell ourselves – and Chang-Richardson’s Blood Belies is a promise to tend to and tell the stories that live in between, to seek in them our collective truths."
From a Cree Poet Whose Work Feels like a Crisp Walk in the Woods, to Rhymes that Delight, Shake and Flutter, Canadian Writers Celebrate National Poetry Month (Wanda Praamsma, Toronto Star, 04/04/2024)
"A debut collection from Ellen Chang-Richardson, 'Blood Belies' is daring in its expansiveness. The poems ask, and create space, for contemplation, questioning, frustration, and ultimately awareness, examining systemic and institutional racism (the “polite/hypocrisy/of Canada”) and personal and familial trajectories. . . . The poems are terrific in their untethered-ness, using experimental forms, supple rhythm, and fervid language play . . . to unwind the mind."
Interviews
12 or 20 (second series) questions with Ellen Chang-Richardson (rob mclennan, rob mclennan's blog, 05/05/2025)
"A poem may start and finish on the page but it gains new life in the air."
Blood Belies (Hollay Ghadery, New Books Network, 28/12/2024)
Hollay Ghadery interviews Ellen about their collection.
My May 13th interview with Ellen Chang-Richardson (Bruce Kauffman, finding a voice, 14/06/2024)
An interview with Ellen Chang-Richardson with a short reading of newer work.
Ellen Chang-Richardson's Blood Belies (Alan Neal, All in a Day with Alan Neal, 05/04/2024)
Ellen talks to Alan before their book release at Club Saw.
Ellen Chang-Richardson Confronts the Past and Perseveres in Their Debut Poetry Collection (Open Book, 04/04/2024)
"The truth is, we are all of the same beating heart – the same flesh, bone, liquid, shit – it’s the misguided concepts of what blood entails that deceive us."
No Filter – March 25, 2024 (Ming Wu, No Filter, 25/03/2024)
Ming Wu interviews Ellen about Blood Belies.
Articles
15 Books for Lunar New Year (All Lit Up, 29/01/2025)
A wonderful round up of books for the Lunar New Year, including Blood Belies!
my fourteenth annual ‘best of’ list of 2024 Canadian poetry books (rob mclennan, rob mclennan's clever substack, 27/12/2024)
It's lovely to see Ellen Chang-Richardson's fabulous collection on this best of list for 2024.
Spotlight series #103 : Ellen Chang-Richardson (rob mclennan, Medium, 04/11/2024)
It's wonderful to see Ellen Chang-Richardson in rob mclennan's Spotlight series.
A Node in the Nebulae (Plenitude Magazine, 02/04/2024)
Ellen shares an excerpt from their collection.
Blood Belies (2024 Debuts, 05/03/2024)
A wonderful mention of Ellen Chang-Richardson's Blood Belies is up at 2024 Debuts.
Excerpt
Click here to read an excerpt of Blood Belies.