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Hong Kong through Images and Imagery Conducted by Eddie Tay Part 1: Imagery in Poetry (90 minutes) This session will start with a few ideas about creativity. It will then explore a few principles behind the running of creative writing workshops. We will explore what it means to be playing with language in an informed manner. We will look at two short poems. I will discuss Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro” and William Carlos Williams’ “The Red Wheelbarrow” to show how images work in poetry. This is followed by a short writing exercise during which the participants’ own photographs (on their mobile phones) will be used as creative prompts. This is an exercise that can be used in the secondary school classroom. Part 2: Writing with Photographs (90 minutes) This session will draw directly from my experience as a street photographer and writer. I will talk about the intertwined creative processes of street photography and creative writing. I will then go on to talk about my own poems, “fence” and “glass city”, with accompanying photographs. I will explain how visual images (photographs) can be used as a prompt for writing poetry. I will then provide a handout of a few photographs of Hong Kong with a few writing prompts. This is followed by a short writing session. Prompts will be provided for participants to experience what it means to write about Hong Kong. These are exercises that can be used in the secondary school classroom. About Eddie Tay Eddie Tay is a poet, street photographer and literature professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His teaching and research areas are linked to his creative interests in poetry and street photography. He has published research in the areas of creative writing, street photography as well as colonial and postcolonial Singaporean and Malaysian literatures written in English. He teaches the following undergraduate courses: Children’s Literature, Reading Poetry, and Creative Writing. He also teaches a special topics postgraduate course focusing on the exploration of Hong Kong culture via autoethnography, street photography and social media.

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PART ONE ON CREATIVITY AND CULTURE

IMPORTANCE OF CREATIVITY

1) “If you are a scientist or engineer, an architect or designer, a writer, artist, or musician, or if your creativity is a key factor in your work in business, education, health care, law, or some other profession, you are a member.” Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class--Revisited: 10th Anniversary Edition--Revised and Expanded

2) “Beneath the surface, unnoticed by many, an even deeper force was at work—the rise of creativity as a fundamental economic driver, and the rise of a new social class, the Creative Class.” Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class--Revisited: 10th Anniversary Edition--Revised and Expanded

3) “Every child is an artist, the problem is staying an artist when you grow up” Pablo Picasso (Time Magazine, Oct 1976)

4) “Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, the just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while” Steve Jobs

5) “One of the surest of tests is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.” T. S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood

6) “We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.” Alan W. Watts, The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

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Focus on Language and Creativity on workshops and the anti-Romantic approach to writing focus on tasks, not “self-expression” playing with language in an informed/disciplined manner language and visual images: Imagist tradition of poetry

IN A STATION OF THE METRO (By Ezra Pound) The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough. THE RED WHEELBARROW (William Carlos Williams) so much depends upon

a red wheel barrow

glazed with rain water

beside the white chickens.

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Exercise 1 Scroll through the photographs in your mobile phone. Select 5 photographs. Photo 1: objects only Photo 2: yourself and another person Photo 3: food Photo 4: other people Photo 5: any photo you choose Write a poem titled “These are Photographs of Me” by doing the tasks below. In 1-3 sentences, describe the objects in Photo 1 as if they are you. EG “I am a chair because…”, “I am a cup because…”, “I am a pen because…” In 1-3 sentences, describe the moment that led to the taking of Photo 2. In 1-3 sentences, describe why you are like the food in Photo 3. EG: “I am siu mai because…” In 1-3 sentences, describe the person(s) in Photo 4 as if they are your favourite animals. EG “Jason is a cat because …”, “Jenny is a rabbit because …” In 1-3 sentences, explain why Photo 5 is important to you. Exercise 2 (Sample exercise for your students) Take a walk through a particular place. (E.G. a shopping mall, your school, your neighbourhood, Sham Shui Po.) The rule is that you must take photographs of your surroundings at the rate of 1-3 photographs for every twenty steps. If you have not taken a single photograph within 20 steps, stop and do not proceed until you have done so. Act like a curator - select EXACTLY 10 photographs. Write a short essay about why these photographs are important in order for one to understand YOUR EXPERIENCE of the place. You’ll need to explain your thoughts/emotions in relation to every photograph.

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PART TWO What is street photography? A way of seeing/thinking/feeling:

“… to look more fleetingly, less insistently, with more responsiveness. The eye does not stare or gaze, because such a perceptual mode is unproductive; the eye traverses, flickers, glimpses, intuits, guesses, constantly feeding itself into new patterns of circulation.” (26) “It seems important that photographs should, as part of their real value to us, maintain their vivid relationship with the casual, the contingent, the accidental, the arbitrary.” (32) “It is as if the shutter of the street poet’s eye, like that of the street photographer’s camera, has the power to create a channel of communication between the literal and the figurative, the given and the possible, the seen and the hallucinated.” (43) “the legibility of cities is to be found not in political institutions, social hierarchy, topographical segmentations, but in pavements, empty chairs, rain and umbrellas, stalls and shop windows — but are forms of ocular invocation, the teasing out of transitory revelation by the glance.” (73)

All quotes taken from Clive Scott’s Street Photography: From Atget to Cartier-Bresson Examples of the practice of street photography “WYNC Street Shots: Bruce Gilden” [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nc1RrQXidlY] “Daido Moriyama in Hong Kong in 2012” [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epS0jTJ3P2o] Eric Kim [http://erickimphotography.com/blog/] Nguan [http://nguan.tv/singapore.htm] Aik Beng Chia [http://www.aikbengchia.com/homepage] Street photography as part of larger project (my own work) HK Lucida [https://hongkonglucida.com/] Photo Essay: “Street Meditations: On Poetry, Street Photography and Everyday Life in Hong Kong” [http://journals.iium.edu.my/asiatic/index.php/AJELL/article/view/257/239]

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Cluster of related ideas associated with street photography Dérive – unplanned journey through an urban landscape, enjoying/absorbing impressions Flâneur – drifter, stroller, to whom street scenes are akin to art exhibits Psychogeography – an intellectual movement that values the importance of loitering/walking around somewhat aimlessly; however one must remain attentive to how the environment shapes the emotions, subjective experiences and behavior of the self and others Writers associated with the above 3 practices:

Iain Sinclair’s London Overground Alain de Botton’s A Week at the Airport

Bricolage – the practice of creating something new out of materials you have at hand; the street photographer as a MacGyver figure; composing a photograph out of whatever that is in front of him/her Home work: Check out Invisible Photographer Asia [http://invisiblephotographer.asia/] Find out more about these other street photographers: Henri Cartier-Bresson, Saul Leiter, Martin Parr, Vivian Maier, Fan Ho, Walker Evans, William Klein, Lee Friedlander, Bill Cunningham, Diane Arbus.

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glass city (eddie tay) sometimes i think the glass of buildings fluid i dream of swimming away who wouldn’t fancy in their name the letters titles of buildings i dream of swimming away who wouldn’t stop and stay rooted like trees bending by the tarmac in singapore hong kong taipei beijing sometimes i think the glass of buildings fluid and i’ll swim to hear the silence of bodies underwater

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fence (eddie tay) skyscrapers all eyes looking at the centre henry aspires to harvard business and throws away his harmonica jenny is driving a car into her global spider networked future jonah unfurls like a creased carpet on the eighth floor to watch voodoo tv someone is working on her tablet cv on winning beans and influencing people dorcas must pass her abrsm she bangs her piano or else her mother skyscrapers, fence all eyes looking

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Writing with Photography Step 1: Look at the photographs in the next few pages. Step 2: Pick 3 – 4 photographs and respond to the prompts. Step 3: Pack your responses to the photographs together into a poem. Feel free to shuffle the lines around and make any changes you want in this final step. Give this poem a title.

Pretend you are one of the cows. Write 2-3 sentences to visually describe what you are thinking of. End this fragment with “I am Hong Kong”.

What are they eating? What does the food taste like? Describe the place. End this fragment with “This is Hong Kong”.

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Describe this woman’s day in 3-5 sentences, beginning from when she wakes up to when she finishes work. End this fragment with “She is Hong Kong”.

In 3-5 sentences, describe what the past 2 hours were like for the couple. End this fragment with “Because they are Hong Kong”.

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Describe where you could have seen her. End the fragment with “Because this is Hong Kong”.

What is he about to buy and who is he buying it for? End the fragment with “He is doing this for Hong Kong”.

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Describe where each of them is going. End this fragment with “They/We are all going to Hong Kong”.

What is she looking for? What is she planning to write in the sand? End this fragment with “Because she is hoping for Hong Kong”.