By: Gem Yelin Lee, Copy Editor
“There is nothing / more soothing / than returning / to the water / with only / our unyielding / imagination / of whatever / we want to be, / once we sense / it’s safe / to re-emerge.”
These lines close David Ly’s second poetry book, Dream of Me as Water. They ran a chill down my spine — the perfect ending to this fantasy-filled, lyrical adventure. Dream of Me as Water follows Ly’s stunning first poetry collection, Mythical Man. Both books were published by Anstruther Books, an imprint of Palimpsest Press.
Dream of Me as Water is tied together with themes of water, and the mythological or fantastical. Each poem reads as a chronicle of innermost thoughts representing themselves as dreamscapes.
The Peak spoke to Ly, SFU alum and Vancouver-based poet, about his newest release.
“Because my first poetry book Mythical Man was quite ‘serious,’ I wanted this second collection — a companion to the first book — to be lighter and more freeing for me in terms of the subject matter I wanted to write about,” said Ly. “So choosing the dreamier route, and staying within my realm of mythological-esque poems, gave me an opportunity to explore without being bound to anything, I felt. Water was also an exciting metaphor to explore in as well, since I feel it was a good bridging device between dreams and myth — how they flow into one another.”
Dream of Me as Water feels relatable to one of many identity crises’ students encounter through their studies and their young adulthood. The feelings this book explores — stress, facing fears, and self-love — paint the walls of my own experiences of late-night thought spirals and daydreaming through courses.
Maybe this relatability was what initially drew me to Ly’s lyrical lines, but the places his imagination swept me into was what captivated me.
Through exploring the natural and fantastical world, Ly shows us how they become intertwined with identity. Lines like, “Maybe it’s natural for him to return / to the three seas where his existence is rooted / from time to time, pulled back to write about facets of identity while trying to imagine how else / he can be seen,” are followed by, “like a freshwater eel instinctually / finding its way to the Sargasso Sea in order to spawn, / the larvae metamorphosizing so they can return / to rivers before they yearn for their sea of origin.”
Ly explained the title Dream of Me as Water came from the final poem of the book, which has the same name. The book is split into three sections: “Dream,” “Dream of Me,” and “Dream of Me as Water,” an idea he accredits to his editor, Jim Johnstone.
Ly explained the title being split and progressively becoming whole, represents a state of evolving.
“Since the book explores the creation of an identity (not bound to the expectations of others), stacking the words to name the titles, to me, feels like the building of an identity. But, in the end, even when the narrator(s) arrive at who they think they are, it isn’t completely solidified, because I think an identity is ever-growing/evolving,” said Ly. “To capture this idea, we landed on the title being ‘Dream of Me as Water’ because of its malleability — like the growing of an identity.”
Although many of the poems feel based on dreams, there is only one based on a real dream Ly had: “I Only Remember Dreams When Stressed.” Ly said the others were based on the daydreams he indulges in each day. He writes poems the way he wants them to be read and understood, making his dreamscapes easy to happily get lost in.
“Nowadays, I’m really intrigued at how much a poem can say in such few words, and by how vivid imagery can be. I think that’s my main drive to write poetry, and will always be: to see how vivid of an image I can conjure in very few words,” said Ly, reflecting on his writing process.
When asked what he wants readers to experience from Dream of Me as Water, Ly said, “I think I just want them to have a good time with it and wonder at all of the creatures in it. I had a fun time writing it because I really got to indulge my imagination, so if readers can escape reality for a bit and hug the octopuses in this book, that would be great.”
Reading Dream of Me as Water in a rather hectic and stressful time in my life, the book felt like a welcome escape from reality’s constraints. I happily “swam the waterways / of long-gone mangrove forests,” with Ly’s spinosaurus, and imagined I, too, could heal as well as a giant pacific octopus which “magically grow / a whole body / of newfound limbs.”
Dream of Me as Water by David Ly can be purchased through the publisher online, or locally (both online and in-person) at Massy Books and Iron Dog Books.
