Brian Chan was born in Guyana. He moved to Canada in the 1970s and now lives in Edmonton, Alberta. In addition to writing poetry, he is a clarinetist, jazz vocalist and painter.
Poetry
Fabula Rasa: A Book
Leeds: Peepal Tree Press, 1994.
PS8555.H3924 F33 1994
Publisher’s Synopsis (from its website)
Brian Chan’s poetry goes beyond everyday appearance to the inner space where the consciousness ‘begins to question the power of space it has fictioned’. In staring into the abyss over which such fictions are spun, Fabula Rasa challenges all comfortable and solid assumptions. Thus, those poems which affirm the power of love or celebrate those moments ‘brimming with light’, seem both more powerful and more movingly vulnerable in their act of affirmation.
Poetry
The Gift of Screws
Leeds: Peepal Tree, 2008.
PS8555 .H3924 G54 2008
Publisher’s Synopsis (from its website)
At the heart of Chan’s obliquely political vision is the conviction that ‘all is given to be handed on’, that miracles can happen if they are ‘not erased by a collector’s itch to own them to dust’. He stares into an abyss of numb, meaningless emptiness, rages against the cages, but keeps faith with love and pride in his ‘brave human comrades’ who keep like faith.
Poetry
Scratches on the Air
Leeds: Peepal Tree, 2010.
PS8555.H3924 S37 2010
Publisher’s Synopsis
… explores the connections between writing and living, the desire to make a mark but the consciousness of living in a hotel where the doors never stop turning, where the attempt to create is an ‘urge of sand at the mercy of the wind’. … What there is are webs of sounds, webs of moments of connection, and Chan is particularly moving in his reflections on those moments of connection within the domestic cycle.
With a world set between the prairies of Canada and Guyanese memory, Brian Chan keeps alive a vision of essential human freedom from nationalism and commerce, where comfort’s ‘the smoothest corruption’.
Poetry
Thief With Leaf
Leeds: Peepal Tree, 1988.
PS8555.H3924 T5 1988
Publisher’s Synopsis
Awards and Honours
1988 or 1989 Guyana Prize for Poetry (Winner)
Links
Publisher Peepal Tree Press