Kathryn Gwun-Yeen Lennon 君妍 was born and raised in Edmonton/Amiskwacîwâskahikan, with mixed Hong-Kong Cantonese and Irish ancestry. Her poetry has been published in several literary journals and anthologies. She also is a collaborative poem-film maker and according to her publisher, “the co-founder and co-editor of Hungry Zine, a food-focused publication that centres voices missing in mainstream food media.”
Poetry
Duckweed: Poems
Edmonton: NeWest Press, 2026.
forthcoming Oct. 2026
Publisher’s Synopsis (From its website)
浮萍 Duckweed gets it’s title from a Chinese proverb describing wanderers, a life with little or no roots. The poems in this collection evoke the process of wayfinding: orienting, choosing a path, navigating, and arrival. They act as signposts through landscapes of time and space as the poet works to locate herself in language, race, gender, place, culture, migration, and a collective and family history. These poems wander between English and Cantonese. They wander between the personal, the historical, the systemic; between Hong Kong and Alberta, between Edmonton’s and Vancouver’s Chinatowns; between the kitchens of mother, grandmother, and self. And in wandering, the poet arrives at her place among lost, or loose, ties to cultural identity and grandmother tongues. Evocative, tender, fiery and soft, space-and-time-travelling work.