Kubrick Poetry • Nature in the Rhyme

The 11th Hong Kong Literature Festival

Date: 7/72016 (Thursday)

Time: 7:00-8:30pm

Venue: Activity Room1, Hong Kong Central Library

Guests: Celia Claase, Elbert Siu Ping Lee and James Shea

Moderator: Polly Ho Sai Fung

Living in a city of cement, poets bring their readers back to nature through landscape in the poem. How important is the nature elements in poetry writing? Is nature a genuine source of inspiration or an imaginative component that purify poetry? How often do you venture into nature and how often do you venture into facebook? Why do poets still write rains, streams, hills, flowers and birds to express emotions, conflicts and love? Where does nature take us when we face everyday challenges in career, relationship and personal pursuit? Does the change in weather ultimately change our writing? How does global warming affect our way of living and our way of writing as well as other art forms?

Celia Claase

Celia teaches English, drama and creative writing by day and writes in her free time. Her first collection of fantasophical essays and poetry won the 2014 international Provese prize and an additional Proverse publishing prize.  Her poetry and writing also features in the WiPs journals, Imprint 13, 14 and15; Writers Abroad International journal “Foreign and Far away;” e-journal LitNet and will feature in the forthcoming Rhodes University SA’s journal, New Coin. Her stage script: “The Three Thieves” received an outstanding award from The Hong Kong School and Drama Festival and she won a prize from LitNet e-journal for a piece of flash fiction. Celia is a member of Poetry OutLoud and Peel Street Poets. She acted as a judge for Performing Artistes Association (Asia) Arts & Speech Competition (2015); co-ordinated the WiPS’s annual Short Story Competition for Senior School Students in 2014 and is a preliminary Judge for the 2016 HK Baptist University’s Budding Poets Award program.

Elbert Siu Ping Lee

Elbert Siu Ping Lee teaches psychology at Upper Iowa University, Hong Kong Campus. He is also the editor of City Upbeats, a student affairs magazine published by the City University Of Hong Kong. Elbert has contributed poems and featured articles to a number of local magazines such as Muse Magazine, Asian Cha, and Poetry Macao.

Some of his recently published poems have appeared in Hong Kong Poems, an English-German anthology, published by Stauffenburgs, 2007, and in Fifty/Fifty: A new anthology of Hong Kong writing, published by Haven Books, 2008. His most recent work is the poetry collection Rain on the Pacific Coast, published by Proverse Hong Kong, 2013.

James Shea

James Shea is the author of two poetry collections, The Lost Novel (Fence Books, 2014) and Star in the Eye (Fence Books, 2008). Star in the Eye was selected for the Fence Modern Poets Series and included in the Poetry Society of America’s New American Poets series. A former Fulbright Scholar in Hong Kong, he has taught at Nebraska Wesleyan University, the University of Chicago’s Committee on Creative Writing, Columbia College Chicago’s MFA Program in Poetry, DePaul University, and as a poet-in-residence in the Chicago public schools. He is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Humanities and Creative Writing at Hong Kong Baptist University.

Polly Ho Sai Fung (Moderator)

Polly Ho Sai Fung graduated from the University of Hong Kong majoring in Psychology. She has been devoting her time organizing poetry readings at Kubrick Poetry since 2007. She feels privileged to have encountered so many talented local and international poets. She has twice successfully secured the Year Grant from the Arts Development Council for Kubrick Poetry Society (2010-2011, 2013-2014).  She teaches English at a primary school. 

Official link:

https://www.hkpl.gov.hk/tc/extension-activities/hklf/hklf11/event-detail/93151