GILLIAN BICKLEY'S fourth collection of poems in which she responds to people, art and life, creating a record of her particular space in time. Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, Sukhothai, Honolulu, Mexico City, northernmost Scotland, Andorra are among the places. Intimates and strangers are the people. She is interested as much in a mother and son seen for some seconds on a bridge in Shanghai as in the emotions flowing between performer and conductor throughout a concert, and the interpretation one creative artist gives to that of another's work. She values the records we all make: - the heritage we may or may not preserve, what we choose to reveal of our lives, the constant interpretative understanding of the personal as well as the historical past, and the sacredness of memory. Here we find observation and reflection - on current affairs as well as people and places - and also the frisson produced by five "skulls" in a window, a funeral owl caught in hire-car headlights, and the realization that classical stories are re-enacted in our own lives. " ... a collection refined by the sensitivity and spirit of a poet who observes with the wonder and clarity of someone who is at once an insider and outsider. In her works, we see that Bickley's poetry has the ability to provide both spontaneous, on-the-spot immediacy and lingering, contemplative power...."Every city may have its gaps, ambiguities and unknowabilities, and the poet's intimate and candid reflections in this collection have successfully uncovered some of them." - Hilary Chan Tsz-Shan, Reviews, Asian Cha, February 2010 (Issue 10)."You are lucky to have this poetry in your hand." - Karmel Schreyer"The poems in CHINA SUITE are unpretentious, direct, and even raw, like gemstones freshly dug out of a quarry. The psychological boundaries drawn to separate cultures from cultures, clans from clans, and individual from individual are utterly destroyed. An unnoticed observer, she trespasses ethnic taboos and social no-nos, and writes down whatever she sees without getting caught-in a graceful way." - Elbert S. P. Lee
About the Author: GILLIAN BICKLEY, born and educated in the United Kingdom, has lived mostly in Hong Kong since 1970. Her poetry collections include "For the Record and other Poems of Hong Kong" (2003, 2016), "Sightings" (2007), "China Suite" (2009) and "Perceptions" (2012). Two collections, "Moving House" and "For the Record", have been published in Chinese; individual poems have been translated into several languages, including Czech and Turkish and anthologised in Hong Kong, the Philippines, Romania and the United Kingdom. In July 2014, at the 18th International Festival, "Curtea de Arges Poetry Nights", held in Romania, she was awarded the "Grand Prix Orient-Occident Des Arts" by the Festival Board. She is one of the Hong Kong poets discussed in Agnes S. L. Lam's study, "Becoming poets: The Asian English Experience". Her other writings include The Golden Needle: The Biography of Frederick Stewart (1836-1889) (1997) and The Stewarts of Bourtreebush (2003). She is the editor of Hong Kong Invaded! A '97 Nightmare (2001), The Development of Education in Hong Kong, 1841-1897 (2002), A Magistrate's Court in Nineteenth Century Hong Kong: Court in Time (2005, 2009), and The Complete Court Cases of Magistrate Frederick Stewart (2008). With Richard Collingwood-Selby, she co-edited In Time of War (2013) (the selected writings, photographs and drawings of Henry Collingwood-Selby). A long-term adjudicator at the Hong Kong Schools' Speech Festival, she was one of the Adjudicators for the Royal Commonwealth Society Hong Kong Poetry Writing Competition, and one of four voices in the full audio recording of Verner Bickley's three volume anthology, "Poems to Enjoy". Her poems are popular with students and teachers for competitions, festivals and grade examinations. Dr Bickley taught in the Department of English at the Hong Kong Baptist University, as Senior Lecturer / Associate Professor, for twenty-two years. She has also taught at Universities in Lagos, Nigeria; Auckland, New Zealand; and the University of Hong Kong.