State of Play - Poets of East & Southeast Asian Heritage in Conversation
How do we think of ourselves as poets? How does our race, our home(s), and our cultural heritage, shape our sense of belonging, our ways of seeing or experiencing the world? How can we learn from and offer support to each other?
State of Play brings together conversations between an international line-up of poets, taking place over the course of a year. Edited by Eddie Tay, a Singapore-born, Hong Kong-based poet and literature professor and Jennifer Wong, a Hong Kong-born, British-based poet, this anthology offers rich insights into these questions and the ways a life lived in many places can invigorate one’s writing.
With themes ranging from the sense of home and racialised expectations, to community and language, as well as the process of writing poetry, these creative discussions delve into the complexities and diversity of identity in the days of global citizenship and cultural diaspora.
Click here to order a copy of State of Play.
On this page you can find out more about State of Play and catch up on audio recordings and videos around the book with some of the many excellent contributors.
Praise for State of Play
‘Deeply intimate and profoundly intellectual, the letters in State of Play have together kindled a new light for everyone of us who is searching between languages, cultures, and worlds. An essential book.’ —Yan Ge
Reminds us of the global reach of English-language poetry and poetics, whose production is not limited to the predominantly white Anglophone countries of the so-called West.' —Prof. Dorothy Wang
'Draws together a sparky and inspiring array of conversations... I wager that no reader interested in poetry will not find excitement in this vibrant anthology.’ —Prof. Elleke Boehmer
'This anthology offers rare and intimate insights into the creative challenges of writing poetry' —Prof. Susheila Nasta, Founder of Wasafiri
‘Multiple yet singular, the conversations here reveal the complexities of poetic language.' —Prof. Sandeep Parmar
Editors & Contributors
Editors: Eddie Tay & Jennifer Wong
Contributors: Romalyn Ante, Khairani Barokka, Natalie Linh Bolderston, Troy Cabida, Mary Jean Chan, Victoria Chang, Chen Chen, Tim Tim Cheng, Felix Chow, Kit Fan, Jay Gao, Will Harris, Sarah Howe, Antony Huen, Joshua Ip, L Kiew, Laura Jane Lee, Li-Young Lee, Louise Leung, Dong Li, Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Mukahang Limbu, Aaron Maniam, Theresa Muñoz, Alvin Pang, Nina Mingya Powles, Helen Quah, Sean Wai Keung, Lora Supandi, Arthur Sze, Marylyn Tan, Jennifer Lee Tsai, R. A. Villanueva, Jenny Xie, Jinhao Xie, Yanyi, Eric Yip, Monica Youn, and Ethan Yu.
Eddie Tay is a street photographer and a poet. His bilingual poetry collection, The Mental Life of Cities, is a winner of the 2012 Singapore Literature Prize. Dreaming Cities is a collection featuring both poetry and street photography set in Singapore and Hong Kong. His most recent work, Hong Kong as Creative Practice, blends creative documentary writing with street photography. He is currently completing a draft of an autoethnography of creative practices.
Jennifer Wong was born and raised in Hong Kong and now based in the UK. She earned an MA in creative writing at the University of East Anglia and earned a creative writing PhD at Oxford Brookes University. Wong is the author of three poetry collections including &^.a Letters Home (Nine Arches Press, 2020), which explored migration, translating culture and the cartography of the self. She has taught creative writing at Poetry School, City Lit, Oxford Brookes University and worked as writer-in-residence at Wasafiri in 2021. She was a visiting fellow at Oxford TORCH for 2022.
Reviews and Excerpts
Read the transatlantic dialogue between Sarah Howe and Monica Youn in the Autumn 2023 issue of The Poetry Review, available here.
Not as a Noun but as a Verb – read Alvin Pang and Laura Jane Lee in conversation on ‘home’, excerpted in Wasafiri here.
In this excerpt, up on Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Joshua Ip (from Singapore) asks Felix Chow (from Hong Kong) what Kongish (also known as Konglish) is, and Felix asks Joshua what Singlish is.
Events, Podcasts & Videos
Monica Youn, Kit Fan, Will Harris and Sarah Howe discuss State of Play at King’s College London
LISTEN: On 28 November 2023, Sarah Howe, Chen Chen and Lora Supandi joined Professor Elleke Boehmer in Oxford for a discussion event around State of Play. Listen to the audio recording here:
