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More reviews by Reid Mitchell
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Hong Kong U Writing: an anthology by Tammy Ho (ed.)
One of the great advantages of taking part in the United State's Fulbright program, is the opportunity to encounter new writers from different cultures, something of which I took advantage while I was in Hong Kong recently. I met young poets such as Eddie Tay, originally from Singapore, and Tammy Ho, a Hong Kong native, as well as others affiliated with the University of Hong Kong. Some work of these superbly-talented writers, as well as established writers such as Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Agnes Lam, and Page Richards, has been collected in HONG KONG U WRITING: AN ANTHOLOGY.
Ho introduces the anthology by explaining that it "began as a dual class project but soon transformed into a showcase to launch a community of passionate writers into the emerging field of creative writing in Hong Kong, Asia, and beyond."
It is impossible in a short review to be fair to all the writers assembled by this anthology. Instead of discussing all of them, I will merely point to a few selections, not entirely at random.
Arthur Leung contributes his "Twelve Nights -- Selected Hong Kong Places in the Form of Haiku". Each one evokes a place and a feel familiar to all who know Hong Kong. Consider "vi. Outside a daipaidong, Shamshuipo".
one fishball astray
a dog sniffs at the road
the passing car barks
All three objects, fishball, dog and car -- become animals. The three "a's" in "the passing car barks" are three barks in a row themselves.
Wendy Gans's "Unmapped" concerns the geography of the male body substituting for the geography of landscape.
your gloved fingers are five mountains
that none has climbed
The anthology ends with an exceptional poem, Jean Tsui Kam's "The Wandering Girl".
How snowflake envies plum blossom.
When the autumn is over,
The two fall,
One landing on mud,
The other
Melting in mid-air.
The reversal of expectation -- surely we expect the blossom to envy the snowflake, not the snowflake to prefer the mud to non-existence -- invites us into the mind of the wandering girl. Are these few lines her thought? Yet for all we readers know, the wandering girl has no thoughts of blossom nor snowflake, and the poet merely juxtaposes the three.
Tay's "Life is Only Once, Like a Leaf" wonderfully compresses the sense of a sojourner's life in Hong Kong -- and I would know. Ho's "His T-shirts" is a moving portrayal of a father's relationship with his daughters. Vivien Sum offers a section of a novel with "Last to Go," a piece rife with promise. And there are so many more pieces I would name, if space permitted.
Perhaps because of its origins in the classroom, the anthology does have a few weaknesses; there are few enough themes for poets to visit, lord knows, but some poets here seem to have visited these on assignment. As usual, for a book of poetry, there are too many funerals and graveyards. Funerals and graveyards are so much easier to write about than life. Nonetheless, this graceful anthology will introduce the reader to the community of writers associated with Hong Kong University, writers the reader will want to keep an eye on.
Reid Mitchell
23/11/2006
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Reid Mitchell, a historian and novelist, was the Fulbright Visiting Professor of American Studies at Hong Kong University, 2005-2006. He too has written about funerals and graveyards. |
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