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SUMMARY:MOVING A STONE: Reading & Conversation with Hong Kong Poet Yam Gong
DESCRIPTION:Join us for this rare\, first-ever US visit from revered Hong 
 Kong poet Yam Gong\, whose 50 years of philosophical work has been brought 
 together for the first time in English translation in the 
 highly-anticipated Moving a Stone: Selected Poems of Yam Gong (Zephyr 
 Press\, 2025). Of his work Forrest Gander has said: "No recommendation of 
 his poems could be as effective as simply reading one...."\n\n\nBorn in 
 1949\, the poet left school at the age of thirteen and\, in 1973\, took a 
 job as a maintenance worker at a dockside warehouse. The work gathered in 
 Moving A Stone reflects the next 50 years of his life and work\, as Yam 
 Gong labored six days a week while managing to write poetry that (despite 
 his distance from all established literary circles) is now widely 
 celebrated by both experimental and traditionalist poets and critics in 
 Hong Kong’s literary community. Using shifting tonal registers\, he 
 refashions borrowed language\, including English song lyrics\, Cantonese 
 slang\, Chinese folk stories\, and news reports.\n\nCo-translated by James 
 Shea and Dorothy Tse\, Moving a Stone was selected as the featured book for 
 One City One Book Hong Kong\, a community reading programme organized by 
 The Education University of Hong Kong. Yam Gong and his co-translators will 
 give an introduction to the contemporary Hong Kong literary scene and share 
 his poems in a bilingual presentation followed by a Q&A with the audience. 
 Special thanks to the Hong Kong Arts Development Council\, which has 
 generously sponsored Yam Gong's reading tour in the United. 
 States.\n\n\nIn-Person Attendance: Woodberry Poetry Room\, Lamont Library\, 
 Room 330.\nFree and open to the public. No RSVP required.\n\n \n\n \n\nYAM 
 GONG (pen name of Lau Yee-ching) was born in Hong Kong and began writing 
 poetry in the 1970s. He has received the Hong Kong Youth Literature Award 
 and the Workers’ Literature Award\, and\, in 1998\, he received the Hong 
 Kong Biennial Award for Chinese Literature for his first book And So You 
 Look at Festival Lights along the Street. He has been appointed to the 
 juries of several poetry awards in Hong Kong\, including the Hong Kong 
 Youth Literature Award\, the Workers’ Literature Award\, the Qui Ying 
 Poetry Award and the Lee Sing-wah Modern Poetry Award.\n\nDOROTHY TSE is a 
 Hong Kong writer\, whose work has received the Hong Kong Book Prize\, Hong 
 Kong Biennial Award for Chinese Literature\, and Taiwan’s Unitas New 
 Fiction Writers’ Award. Her debut novel Owlish\, translated by Natascha 
 Bruce\, was a finalist for the 2023 NBCC Barrios Book in Translation Prize 
 and named a Best Book of 2023 by The New Yorker and a Book of the Year 2023 
 by the Times Literary Supplement.\n\nJAMES SHEA’s third poetry collection 
 Last Day of My Face won the Iowa Poetry Prize and will be published by the 
 University of Iowa Press in 2025. His translations of selected haiku by 
 Sayumi Kamakura\, Applause for a Cloud\, is forthcoming from Black Ocean in 
 2025. He has received grants from the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program\, Hong 
 Kong Arts Development Council\, National Endowment for the Arts\, and the 
 Vermont Arts Council.\n\n \n\nPlease contact us with any questions about 
 this event. We can be reached by email at poetryrm@fas.harvard.edu or via 
 phone at (617) 495-2454. We encourage persons with disabilities who would 
 like to request accommodations or have questions about physical access to 
 contact Houghton Library at least three days in advance of the reading.\n\n
LOCATION:Woodberry Poetry Room (Lamont Library\, Room 330)\, Woodberry Poetry Room
ORGANIZER;CN="Christina Davis":MAILTO:davis2@fas.harvard.edu
CATEGORIES:Presentation
CONTACT;CN="Christina Davis":MAILTO:davis2@fas.harvard.edu
STATUS:CONFIRMED
UID:LibCal-14138761
URL:https://libcal.library.harvard.edu/event/14138761
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