2 October at 1:00pm (UK) and 8:00pm (HK): A special on-line presentation from Poetics of Home: A Chinese Diaspora Poetry Festival
Voices in Hong Kong: Melanie Ho, writer, literary critic regular contributor to the Asian Review of Books, leads a discussion with some of the most-celebrated poets living and writing in Hong Kong.
Born in Singapore, Eddie Tay teaches courses on creative writing and poetry at the Department of English, Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is also involved in the department’s Masterclasses initiative, whereby he engages creative writers to conduct creative writing workshops for secondary school students. He is the author of four volumes of poetry. His first, remnants, consists of renditions of mythic and colonial history of Malaya as well as an homage to the Tang Dynasty poets Li Bai, Du Fu and Li He. His second volume, A Lover’s Soliloquy, extends his interests in Tang Dynasty poetry through renditions of the erotic poetry of Li Shang-yin. It also explores the language of eroticism in the modern city life. His third, The Mental Life of Cities, is a winner of the 2012 Singapore Literature Prize. In it, he experiments with bilingual (English-Chinese) poetry. His fourth collection is Dreaming Cities.
Jason Eng Hun Lee is a poet and scholar of mixed British and Malaysian-Chinese ancestry whose research and practice fields encompass global anglophone literatures, postcolonial and diasporic Asian writing, and global Shakespeares. His debut poetry collection Beds in the East (2019) was a finalist for the Melita Hume Prize and HKU Poetry Prize. He is a Literary Editor for Postcolonial Text and current chief curator for the poetry collective OutLoud HK. He lectures at Hong Kong Baptist University.
Louise Leung is a final-year Arts student at The University of Hong Kong. They are the 2nd Prize winner of the HKBU Century Club Citywide Poetry Competition 2021. Their works have been published multiple times by Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine and Cha: An Asian Literary Journal. They have also been featured in One City One Book 2019: The Arrival poetry reading, and various readings by Cha, Pen Hong Kong and What We Read Now. As a locally-born-and-bred young poet in Hong Kong, Louise mainly writes about its culture and complex identity, and wishes to inspire others to write our own definition as a Hong Konger in our diverse community.
David McKirdy is a long term resident of HK, he is a classic car mechanic by profession and a poet by inclination. He is the author of two collections, Accidental Occidental and Ancestral Worship. He has represented HK at literary events from Colombia to Vietnam, Berlin to Egypt and beyond.
Melanie Ho (moderator) is a writer and journalist, who regularly contributes to the Asian Review of Books. She wrote a short biography, Journey to the West — He Hui: a Chinese soprano in the world of Italian opera, and translated from the French There’s No Poetry in a Typhoon.