| This bilingual
collection opens to wider world view the work of one of Hong Kong's
major Chinese language poets. The poetry ranges from Leung's early
lyrical poems, and poems about places and journeys, to his warm and
humorous poem about things, to more recent poems about cities and
cultures through the mediation of food. Most of the poems are new
translations. The book is edited by Dr Martha Cheung, one of Hong
Kong's most respected literary translators. The preface is by renowned
critic Rey Chow.
Critics Comments
"His poems contain
endless charm and magic, make one see what the eyes have not seen
before, and remember it long after."
Zhang Min
Poet and Professor of Literature
Beijing Normal University "It is fitting
that Travelling With A Bitter Melon, the most comprehensive
collection of Leung Ping-kwan's poetry, should come at a time when
Hong Kong is experiencing an upsurge of interest in home-grown
writing. Fitting, because this bilingual volume will serve to remind
those striving to forge Hong Kong's English-language voice that the
city's most gifted poet has been writing and publishing in Chinese for
more than a quarter of a century, and has built up an invaluable body
of work over that time. This book is a must for anyone who takes Hong
Kong writing seriously.
"The complicated subject of Hong Kong identity
dominates. Leung focuses deliberately on the ordinary: a teacup, a
tree, a deserted tram depot, a bitter melon. They are our shared
images and they are treated tenderly.
"A thread of disciplined intelligence runs through
Leung's work, lending these mundane images a singular power. The first
poem in the volume, 'Tea,' reveals the poet's trademark preoccupation
with food as a metaphor. In this poem, 'Jasmine petals gather/or
disperse in patterns', a reminder of dear friends: 'Kept apart by so
many trivialities/we have no moment of silence/to sit and sip
together'.
"The lines are redolent of classical Chinese poetry,
a key interest – Leung is professor of Chinese at Lingnan University
in Tuen Mun.
"Leung's language is crisp, searching and
unsentimental without simplifying his subject matter. In 'Fragments Of
A Northern Song Dynasty Fish-shaped Pot,' the poet wonders from where
in China it came, and concludes: 'The fragments say: Please carefully
study our grain/Don't read us into/Your history.' Hong Kong is on the
periphery, offering alternative solutions to what it means to be
Chinese in the modern world.
"Later, in 'Images Of Hong Kong,' the narrator
searches for a postcard to send a friend. Yet he finds mostly 'Exotica
for a faraway audience...Entangled with what others have said/Why is
it so hard to tell our own stories?'
"The poems offer a chronological journey froth the
relative stability of the 1970s through the growing insecurities of
the 1980s as the Joint Declaration on Hong Kong's future was signed.
"In an October 1983 poem, 'The Left-handed Woman,'
Leung writes: 'The world is changing/we wish things could be
slower/The static produced in cold weather/makes us withdraw our hands
in a handshake for fear of danger.'
"This period is followed by the profound shock of
June 4, 1989, described in 'A Shelter On Earth.' Written in early
1990, just before Leung left for a tour of Europe, the poem probes the
impact of the Tiananmen Square massacre: 'What festival is it that
stirs people to go searching in history?' The answer is withdrawal,
and waiting. 'Not one home but many many homes/take their chairs
outdoors as fences crumble and fall.'
"This collection also shows Leung's proclivity for
food as a metaphor of cultural identity, something pointed out in Rey
Chow's excellent introductory essay.
"In 'Mussels In Brussels,' the poet muses: 'All say
mussels have no identity problems/Perhaps...after all, here in
Brussels/we still eat Canadian mussels'. Yet the poem's final
conclusion argues for a sense of origin: 'Chinese mussels strayed from
home/thousands of miles away, still taste of/the ponds and lakes that
bred them.'
"There is a cinematic quality to much of Leung's
work, which one of his translators, Gordon Osing, has attributed to
the elisions in the lines. This isn't a coincidence – Leung is
interested in film, and film is the art form that has done the most to
articulate the modern Hong Kong sensibility and win it an
international audience. The films of John Woo or Wong Kar-wai are
examples of this.
"If poetry is an overlooked art these days, then
Hong Kong poetry falls into a doubly ignored category, being poetry
from a city in which few people are interested in the written word.
"Yet readers will find a
vividness and veracity of historical, cultural and emotional detail
which, rooted in the Hong Kong experience, should put to rest any
doubts about the city's place as a literary hub."
Didi Kirsten
Tatlow
South China Morning Post
Readers Comments
Extract
Copyright © Leung Ping-kwan
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