Cosmopolitan Hybridity, Cultural Memory and Curation in Hong Kong Poetry

Abstract

This article builds on previous research on the engagement of British-based Hong Kong Anglophone poets with the visual arts. It attempts to outline an object-based curatorial poetics observed in Hong Kong Anglophone poetry. Understanding curation as a mode of writing, we argue that Hong Kong poets writing in English employ a curatorial poetics, transforming the poetic space into a collection of images while refraining from description, as in ekphrasis. Objects with an Asian/Chinese/Hong Kong connection are presented as a collective, inviting the reader to associate with and reflect upon a pluralistic understanding of Hong Kong’s history based on an intermingling of personal and collective memory. We trace the development of this poetics and identify its beginnings in the works of Chinese-language Hong Kong writers. Then, we examine how a range of poets, both locally and internationally based, utilize the curatorial form to demonstrate the cosmopolitan hybridity that characterizes the city and contribute to an increasingly pluralistic discourse on Hong Kong’s identity. The poems employing this form of poetics act as museums of cultural memory, recording the hybridity of Hong Kong and subverting homogenous, totalizing attempts to define the city.