Fly Heads and Bird Claws

Arguably the most well-known and highly awarded of Hong Kong authors over the last thirty years, Leung Ping-kwan has published fifteen volumes of poetry. Leung also writes fiction and has published a novel and four collections of stories. He currently teaches literature and film studies at Lingnan University, frequently collaborates with visual and performing artists, and has held several poetry and photography exhibitions that feature his own work.

Leung is the consummate tour guide, able to direct readers from kitchen tables through urban and interior landscapes that are mottled with Cantonese, Mandarin, numerous Englishes, and a cascade of other cultures. This ability to create in a hybrid space without sounding forced or inauthentic has evolved throughout his writing career that began in the late 1960s, through PhD work in comparative literature at the University of California, San Diego, in the 1980s, and then back to Hong Kong for a long career of intertwining writing and teaching at several universities.

The poetry book is complemented by conceptual images by artist Gukzik Lau.

Gukzik Lau: Artist and educator (pen-name ‘collecting colors) was born in Hong Kong and graduated from the Ontario College of Art in Toronto (1976) and the Royal College of Art in London (1990). She creates colour prints by utilizing photocopiers, offset and fax machines, and digital inkjet printers

Brian Holton: Brian Holton taught translation for ten years at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. In 1992 he began a continuing working relationship with the poet Yang Lian, which has so far resulted in a dozen books of translated poetry. His most recent collection is Jade Ladder: Contemporary Chinese Poetry

Christopher Mattison: Assistant Director for the Hong Kong Advanced Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Studies, City University of Hong Kong, as well as a senior editor at Zephyr Press and translation editor for Zoland Poetry.

John Minford: Currently chair professor of Translation Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. A Sinologist and literary translator, he is best known for his translations of the Chinese classics The Story of the Stone and The Art of War.