“The speaker within Elaine Woo’s second full-length collection is pretense-adverse, is PC-adverse. Rather than conform to social dictates, she risks candidly addressing the theater of the personal and the social. This speaker raises her voice to systems designed to create…” >>

— Jami Macarty The Maynard

“Elaine Woo’s journey from young childhood to gray hair is told with a close connection to the natural world, even as it succumbs to environmental degradation. She is a relentless observer who gives the reader unique perspectives on such homely…” >>

— Rachael Ikins Snapshots - Don't Die Press

“Vancouver poet Elaine Woo’s first collection, Cycling with the Dragon (Nightwood Editions, 2014), had an often whimsical tone, but despite the poems that focussed on joy and the solace offered by notebooks and creative acts, the persona of this first collection struggled…” >>

— Kim Trainor Prism Magazine

“Clawing from the bottom of a well at the unforgiving stone walls of materialistic society's demands, Elaine Woo gazes longingly toward the natural world. The pressures placed upon women surface, revealing an image of malcontent that can be merely as…” >>

— Sarah-jean Krahn Broken Pencil

“There is no shortage of poems or poetry collections about the natural world, but Elaine Woo’s Put Your Hand in Mine renders nature unfamiliar, sometimes even frightening, and nonetheless a vehicle for human experience. Sensory details, all necessary but not…” >>

— Ren Iwamoto ARC Poetry Magazine

“By its final poem, Put Your Hand in Mine has flashed us through no less than eighty-six scenes depicting family, friendships between women, toxic relationships, and the medicine of the urban natural world in what feels like Vancouver, not directly…” >>

— Danielle Janess The Malahat Review