MOVING HOUSE AND OTHER POEMS FROM HONG KONG was prompted by happenings and thoughts at a time of change. The poems connect new with earlier events, sights, ideas and information, and draw on both urban and rural environments. These poems arose within a variety of cultures, in Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, and in several other countries. Readers from many backgrounds and various ways of life should find points of contact with this poetry, which presents varied experience in words that many will find deceptively simple. The essay on new Hong Kong English language poetry is the text of a talk given in the English Department Staff Seminar series at Hong Kong Baptist University. This followed the writer's participation in the Third Hong Kong International Literary Festival of 2004, as one of "Five New Scorchers." The essay continues the discussion of writing in Hong Kong, found in Gillian Bickley's first poetry collection, For the Record and other Poems of Hong Kong.Commentary by Emeritus Professor I. F. Clarke and M. Clarke --"Gillian Bickley writes as she responds to everyday events, always with the echo of 'time's winged chariot' in her ears. The fact of moving house sends her speeding back through the moves of a lifetime and forward to the last move, to the small room of the grave."The opening poem suggests the elusive presence of the author, and the deeper themes glimpsed through her deceptively simple poems."The variety of human life and the individual response to life, these are Gillian Bickley's central interests. "The power that invigorates the poems in Moving House is the control of language. In this bare, tight poetry, no idle words are allowed. Its vocabulary draws on the base language of essences and epiphanies. The chosen spare language is the perfect partner for this poetry of mature experience."
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.