Description
My Dearest Friend is a bilingual collection written by Lady Red Ego and translated by her mother, Xiaoyu Luo. It documents the relationship between mother and poet as they both come to terms with the mother’s terminal illness.
The collaborative format of the collection is used to explore themes of Buddhist reincarnation, Chinese identity, and the circularity of grief. This is a deeply personal body of work that pinpoints a series of life-changing moments in the poet’s relationship to her mother and the world at large.
‘I love you so widely / I can let death be soft: In Lady Red Ego’s second full collection, My Dearest Friend《我最亲爱的伙伴》, the mother is tenacious and tender, singular and ecological. From China to Scotland, her voice permeates, if not makes, the most devotional and spacious poems. Lady Red Ego has a way of singing to/with the softest part of your heart: ‘If I press my ear / to soil I will hear every god answer me. / The river is flowing into your veins. You are / a mother after all, / all this is yours.’ I am moved to tears by the tested bond between the mother and daughter, convinced by the poet’s ‘promise to burn’. Lady Red Ego’s bilingual poems honour the hard-earned beauty of being honest, of translating yourself home. Between the Chinese and English, the epistolary and confessional, death and renewal, My Dearest Friend 我最亲爱的伙伴 is for those who are not afraid ‘to love deeply, to care gently, to always persist’. - Tim Tim Cheng
The poems in My Dearest Friend《我最亲爱的伙伴》are soft and strong, heartful and honest. Lady Red Ego is adept at weaving imagery and symbolism together to create a shining portrayal of grief and love in what is, ultimately, a collection that celebrates maternal connection through space, place, language and time. This book will make you feel.’ - Sean Wai Keung
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lady Red Ego (@ladyredego) is a Chinese/Scottish lesbian writer concerned with intimacies. Her first pamphlet, The Red Ego, was published in 2019 with Wild Pressed Books and her second pamphlet, Natural Sugars, was published in 2020 by Broken Sleep. Her debut collection, Your Turn to Speak!, was published in March 2023 with Blue Diode Press.
