What are Cantonese and Chinese Doing in Contemporary Hong Kong English-language Poetry?​

Jacky Ho Lung Chan
University of Oxford

Contemporary Hong Kong poets depict their writing in English as a conscious choice. Departing from the Cantonese and Chinese with and in which they grew up, these poets embrace English for its traditions and the liberations it brings. Why, then, do these poets also infuse their poems with Cantonese and Chinese grapholects and characters? Is it to do with verisimilitude and issues of translation? But if that is so, why not simply write in Cantonese and Chinese? This talk makes the case that Cantonese and Chinese in Hong Kong poetry exist precisely in tension with English. This hybridity not only highlights the poets’ dual, liminal, postcolonial identities, but also puts the white reader in a position of linguistic disadvantage, making them experience what post-colonial peoples have long been subject to. The use of Hong Kong English even de-centers standard English and embraces a truly and uniquely Hong Kong identity. Surveying a unique literary langscape of Hong Kong through the works of poets such as Mary Jean Chan, Jennifer Wong, and Nicholas Wong, this talk explores the sociopolitics of what Rey Chow calls Hong Kong writing itself in its own language.

About me!

Jacky Ho Lung Chan

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Jacky, Ho Lung Chan is an undergraduate reading English Language and Literature at St Catherine’s College, Oxford. Born and raised in Hong Kong, he is fascinated with Hong Kong literature and how it brings anglophone and sinophone cultures and traditions in counterpoint. His other areas of interest include, broadly, modernist, postcolonial, and contemporary literatures and their engagements with wider currents of thought. He hopes that he can one day unite and connect all these disparate strands, and create dialogues and points of contact between anglophone and sinophone literatures.

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