“The poems in Cynthia Woodman Kerkham’s Water Quality wash over the reader’s psyche like a blessedly cool drink poured down a parched throat. Alive with a keenly attentive inquiry, driven as much by generosity and wonder as by a muted rage, these poems, delicate and fierce by turns, rinse the grit from our eyes, allowing us to better see what water, in all its forms, is to us - and what, to our peril, we let run down the drain.” Anita Lahey, author of While Supplies Last and co-author of Fire Monster

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“Cynthia Woodman Kerkham’s strong second collection of poetry addresses the fragile business of loss and the hard work of retrieval: how to save a small lake, survive an expatriate childhood, guide children into a world on the brink. In the face of a world on fire, she tenderly describes love. In the overwhelm of mid-century Hong Kong, she defines simple moments. In the complexity of disaster, she chooses life. Written with a reverence often reserved for only the beautiful, she finds beauty in otherness, the unknown. With meticulous research and precise language, she gives us her whole poetic heart, haunted, sifted with science. 'The stars call down in ancestral whispers,' she writes. She is a woman sitting in the vast night, conjuring starlit, lyrical poems; she will capture your heart.” Arleen Paré, author of Lake of Two Mountains and Absence of Wings

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"These poems, like the waters they hold, are satin, albumen, and mammalian. Cynthia Woodman Kerkham neither shies from the wet waters nor the cold truths of human-made changes. Here are poems rich in memory and moments that nearly devastate with their questions, their profoundly embodied lines. From lake, to pool, to Hong Kong’s 'viscous seas,' with moth, mouse, spider, and bullfrog, Water Quality pauses and holds the reader, moment by moment, in its liquid song.” Yvonne Blomer, author of The Last Show on Earth and editor of Sweet Water: Poems for the Watersheds

Cynthia Woodman Kerkham is the author of Good Holding Ground and with feathers and the co-editor of Poems from Planet Earth. She lives in Victoria, British Columbia.

Fork Lake

Water Quality 3
The Lily Pullers 5
In the Round 6
Recipe for Invasive Species 7
Old Gregory 9
Along Came a Spider 10
Fork and Spoon Lake 12
Dereliction, 1908 14
Spill 15
World War 16
Live Trap 17
Border Control 18
Second Lake Report 19
Shift 20
I Sip a Glass of Wine by the Lake 21
Lake Ghazal 22
Wedding 23


Fragrant Harbour

sampan, 1962 27
After Fifty Years, Return to Hong Kong 29
Man o’ War, 1963 31
Diamond-Water Paradox 32
At Tai O Village, 2017 33
Invisible Stitching 35
Lessons in Diplomacy, 1965 36
Public Records Office, Diagnostic Survey, 1960s 38
Expats, 1960s 40
Master and Man 42
Like a Moth to a Flame 47
Hike on Lantau Island, 1968 49
Gold Dinner Bell 51
Eight Imitations of the Poet Wang Wei 52

Gene Pool

Pools 59
Crossword 60
Burnt Pot, Riverbank, Indifferent Sky 62
I Pay a Man to Wash the Windows 65
How We Name Things from Our
Own Seat in the Chevy 66
On Taming Foxes 67
Pierced 68
Slant Rhyme for Orchid 69
Icarus’s Mother 70
Granddaughter in Another City 71
Backyard 72
Baby in the Bathwater 74
Changing 76
On Fridays with You, This Game 77
Recipe with Eggs 78
First Room 79

What Water Wants

Eve River Estuary 83
With No Sweet Water / 水调歌头∙难溯甘泉 85
Four Ws 88
Light Showers, Wi-Fi 90
Argument with Captain Vancouver over the Naming of Desolation Sound 91
Rogue 95
Pachina Bay, ؛Anaqtl’a 97
Nameless Lake 99
Rewilding 100
Automatic Door 101
Selling Soffio 102
Once We Were Animalcules 103
Lament of a Hypocrite Gardener 107
Pipe Dreams 109
The Last Day of the Paris Climate Change Conference, I go to a Beach Spa 110
What Does Water Want? 111
The Disturbed Land 113

Notes and Acknowledgments 115