Description
Jennifer Wong, Jason Eng Hun Lee, Tim Tim Cheng Eds.
Featuring both established and emerging Hong Kong poets across generations and continents, this unique anthology offers a glimpse into an exciting, diverse range of voices that make up the diasporic imagination of the contemporary Hong Kong poetry community. Adopting a diasporic approach, the anthology encompasses both native Hong Kong writers as well as expatriate and mixed-race voices who were born or have lived in the city.
The anthology sheds light on some poignant, wide-ranging themes such as migration, identity, gender, language, belonging, environment that underpin the city of Hong Kong, a place situated uniquely between the East and the West, in the 21st century. The book also features a selection of artworks from some of Hong Kong’s most talented artists, inviting the reader to make connections between the visual images and the text.
‘What a thrill to be invited into this raucous city of poems.
As Walt Whitman once said, we must write poems that sing of the body and of the soul.
These are the people’s poems: Filling our hearts and minds with empires past and dreamscapes of the present: Cantonese opera wafting through windows, the buzz of taxis and street hawkers, landmark pagodas, magical star ferry rides and endless kettles of chrysanthemum tea, dim sum and noodle shops. The atmosphere is alive with brain-teasing pigeon dialects… sizzling avant-garde experiments and melancholic love songs. Mixing the sacred and the profane, the sublime and the quotidian –for all the lightshows and glistening skyscrapers shouting prosperity and future, the people’s Hong Kong never leaves the imagination. Those of us who stay, those of us who went away, never lost our feeling of specialness. We are forever proud outsiders: tough yet kind, ironic yet sincere, nostalgic yet futuristic, compassionate yet catastrophic…As Emerald Liu declares: “this city is a maze in which I centre myself.” We are Hong Kongers to the core and will defend our cantankerous vivid imagination against all invaders and occupiers. Our poetry is the ultimate expression of freedom and is a harbinger of all that is wondrous and possible!’
– Marilyn Chin
Full list of included poets: Martin Alexander – Wahyan Au – John Wall Barger – Andrew Barker – Gillian Bickley – Robert Black – Helen Bowell – Judy Brown – Paola Caronni – Dorothy Chan – Janet Bi Li Chan – Jessica Chan – Mary Jean Chan – Tom K.E. Chan – Yvette Chan – Stephanie Chang – Janet Charman – Tim Tim Cheng – Sam Cheuk – Atom Cheung – Wai Julia Cheung – Marilyn Chin – Felix Chow Yue Ching – Elizabeth Chung Yi Lei – Claire Cox – Cass Donnelly – River 慧瑩 Dandelion – Cecil C. Elleran – Kit Fan – Pui Yan Fong – Nashua Gallagher – D.J. Hamilton – May Huang (黃鴻霙) – Antony Huen – Art Hur – Ian Humphreys – Louise Ho – Polly Ho Sai Fung – Tammy Lai-Ming Ho – Henrik Hoeg – Viki Holmes – Sarah Howe – Akin Jeje – Kavita A. Jindal – Peter Kennedy – KO – Sean Wai Keung – Agnes S. L. Lam – Tung Pang Lam – Carmen Lau Ka Man – Sophie Lau – Wendelin Law – Jason Eng Hun Lee – Laura Jane Lee – Swann Adara Lee – Tara Lee – Henry Wei Leung – Louise Leung Fung Yee – Sannya Li (李瑋琳) – Shirley Lim – Belle Ling – Emerald Liu – Kayla Sik-chi Lui – Ethan Luk – Konstandinos (Dino) Mahoney – Kika Man 文詠玲 – Neil Martin – David McKirdy – Nadee – Collier Nogues – Florence Ng – Chioma Onuoha – Mani Rao – Harry Ricketts – Kate Rogers – Xiao Yue Shan – James Shea – Huiwen Shi – Madeleine Slavick 思樂維 – Tegan Smyth – Stella So – Chris Song – Hilary Tam – Eddie Tay – Jennifer Lee Tsai – Michael Tsang – Chris Tse – Silvia Tse – Roland Tsoi – Lian-Hee Wee – Victoria Wilhelmine Walvis – Wawa – Mags Webster – Jane Wong – Jennifer Wong – Nicholas Wong – Nicolette Wong – Hei Yee Hayley Wu (胡禧怡) – Jerrold Yam – Marco Yan – Eric Yip (葉晉瑋) – Josephine Yip – Carmen (Kaman) Yiu – Ethan Yu – Portia Yu
