Hong Kong Poems is the first-ever collection of poems about Hong Kong in parallel English and Chinese texts. Appearing in the year when Hong Kong returns to Chinese sovereignty, this collection offers insights into what Hong Kong was and is on the edge of becoming. Parkin and Wong speak of the dynamism of Hong Kong, of a city where the present meets the future. As well, they depict the "astronauts" with their families in Canada and their businesses in Hong Kong. They also evoke the feelings of the poor who are leaving the ...
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Hong Kong Poems is the first-ever collection of poems about Hong Kong in parallel English and Chinese texts. Appearing in the year when Hong Kong returns to Chinese sovereignty, this collection offers insights into what Hong Kong was and is on the edge of becoming. Parkin and Wong speak of the dynamism of Hong Kong, of a city where the present meets the future. As well, they depict the "astronauts" with their families in Canada and their businesses in Hong Kong. They also evoke the feelings of the poor who are leaving the countryside for the dreams and hopes of magical Hong Kong. Many of the poems develop from within the Chinese poetic tradition of nature writing, while also recreating the troubled world of developers and their need of land for expansion. The juxtaposition of an English-Canadian poet and a Chinese-Canadian poet -- with their poems in both English and Chinese -- allows the reader to enter a dialogue about Asian modernity, a state of being that the Hong Kong critic Ackbar Abbas has called "postculture."
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