Online Exhibition

HK-SG Digital Travel Bubble

part of The Substation’s Sandbox Programme

Co-presented by The Substation & Sing Lit Station

While residents eagerly await the opening of the first Hong Kong-Singapore physical travel bubble since the COVID-19 outbreak, poets have taken travel plans into their own (sanitised and socially distanced) hands with the HK-SG Digital Travel Bubble. Co-presented by Sing Lit Station and The Substation, this ekphrastic series pairs together 16 poets for a digital poetry experience that will transport readers between the twinned cities. Playing both tourist and tour guide from behind their screens, ruminate with long-time residents about their favourite nooks and experience the same spots through the fresh eyes of a first-time visitor.

Please click here to download the Press Release.

Website Launch
Sunday, 14 February 2021
7pm
http://www.poetry.sg/travelbubble

Event Launch Reading
Saturday, 20 February 2021
3 – 4pm
The Substation’s Facebook Live

HK-SG Digital Travel Bubble is a collaboration between three parties: Research Centre for Human Values at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Sing Lit Station, and The Substation.

Artist Biographies

Singaporean Poets

Marc Nair is a poet who works at the intersection of art forms. He is currently pursuing projects that involve photography and creative non-fiction. His work revolves around the ironies and idiosyncrasies of everyday life. He has published ten collections of poetry.

Yeow Kai Chai is a poet, fiction writer, and editor. He has three poetry collections, One to the Dark Tower Comes (2020), Pretend I’m Not Here (2006), and Secret Manta (2001). A co-editor of Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, he was Festival Director of Singapore Writers Festival from 2015 to 2018.

Daryl Lim Wei Jie is a poet, editor and literary critic from Singapore. His collections of poetry are A Book of Changes (2016) and Anything But Human (forthcoming 2021). He co-edited Food Republic, an anthology of food writing from Singapore. He won the Golden Point Award for Poetry in 2015.

Harini V is a bilingual spoken word artist who has produced poems in English and Tamil. Her Tamil poems have featured in Nithimisai Nagarum Koorangazhkal when she was 19. She represented her college in CUPSI 2017 in Chicago. She kick started the Tamil edition of SingPoWriMo in 2018. She is currently a member of the Tamil Language Council and was awarded the Young Role Model Award by Mediacorp’s Tamil Seithi for her contributions to the Tamil community.

Ang Shuang’s work has been published by the Asian-American Writers' Workshop, the Rumpus, and Tinderbox Poetry Journal. She was a Breakout 8 Writers Prize Winner, and a finalist for the 2020 Autumn House Press Poetry Contest. Shuang recently graduated as an MFA student at Sarah Lawrence College.

Naive Gascon is from Bohol, Philippines, a beach paradise in the Visayas Region and the land of chocolate hills. She went to work as a domestic helper in Hong Kong in 2014 and after around three years got relocated in Singapore. She won first runner-up in the Migrant Worker Poetry Competition in 2017 and is also a part of Call and Response anthology first edition.

Ang Lai Sheng, 1987. Currently the founder, president and editor-in-chief of TrendLit Publishing. His works include the poetry collections After Commotion and Destroy All Gods, and he has edited several anthologies, including Never Before – 50 Essential Poems.

汪來昇，1987。現為新文潮出版社創社社長與總編。著有詩集《喧囂過後》、《消滅眾神》、編有《不可預期：詩精50首》等。

Zulfadli Rashid is a multi-hyphenated playwright; proficient in both English and Malay language. He is an Associate Artist with Teater Ekamatra and is also a founding member of the playwriting collective, Main Tulis Group.

His notable plays include the award-nominated musical 'Alkesah', ‘A Clockwork Orange’ (a Malay-language stage adaptation of the Anthony Burgess’ work), 'Harap' (an adaptation from Haresh Sharma's ‘Hope’), 'The Chronicles of One and Zero: Kancil' and, 'Balik'.

Artist Biographies

Hong Kong Poets

David McKirdy is one of Hong Kong's best-known poets. He was born in Scotland, raised in Hong Kong and confused in England when he arrived there for the first time as a twenty-year-old. Once he returned to Hong Kong, he never left again.

Kit Fan is a novelist, poet, and critic. As Slow As Possible, his second poetry collection, was a Poetry Society Recommendation and The Irish Times Book of the Year. Diamond Hill, his debut novel about Hong Kong, will be published by Little, Brown and World Editions in May 2021. www.kitfan.net

Maheen Haider was born in Hong Kong and is currently studying social sciences at an undergraduate level. When not attending a lecture, she can be found either on the cricket pitch or in the library stacks. She enjoys discovering quiet spots in Hong Kong, talking about Persian rugs and reading both good and bad fiction.

Jason Eng Hun Lee (b. 1984) is a poet and academic of mixed British and Malaysian-Chinese ancestry. His poetry collection Beds in the East (Eyewear, 2019) was a finalist for the Melita Hume Prize and HKU Poetry Prize. He is a Literary Editor for the journal Postcolonial Text and current chief organizer for OutLoud HK. He is a lecturer at Hong Kong Baptist University.

Emily Hedvig Olsson was born and raised in Hong Kong. She currently spends her days studying for her university degree and staring at the scenery. Poetry, she discovers, can be as beautiful as nature.

Sophie Ip is an English major graduate. Since she was a child, she has learned the weight of words and admired the power of imagination. Writing keeps her brain working, where she carefully holds a constellation of her most intricate thoughts.

Antony Huen is a poet, literary critic and academic. His recent publications include poems in amberflora and Ink, Sweat & Tears, and articles in Hong Kong Review of Books and The Oxonian Review.

Twitter: @AntonyHuen | https://antonyhuen.mystrikingly.com

Jennifer Wong is the author of several collections including Goldfish (Chameleon Press) and a pamphlet, Diary of a Miu Miu Salesgirl (Bitter Melon Poetry 2019). Her latest collection, 回家 Letters Home (Nine Arches Press 2020)—which explores the complexities of history, migration and translation—has been named the PBS Wild Card Choice by Poetry Book Society. She studied in Oxford and has earned a creative writing PhD from Oxford Brookes University. She teaches creative writing at Oxford Brookes and Poetry School. Her poems have appeared in World Literature Today, Oxford Poetry, The Rialto, Magma Poetry and others. Her reviews and translations have appeared in a number of magazines including Poetry Review, Poetry London, PN Review and Asian Review of Books. She is also a writer-in-residence for Wasafiri.

Born and grew up in Hong Kong and now based in Surrey.

Co-presented by The Substation and Sing Lit Station