2014/15 Hong Kong Budding Poets (English) Award Poets(English) Budding Award Kong 2014/15 Hong 2014/15 Hong Kong Budding Poets (English) Award Anthology Anthology 2014/2015 Hong Kong Budding Poets (English) Award Anthology Organised by Commissioned to Department of English, City University of Hong Kong Preface “What a strange thing! / to be alive / beneath cherry blossoms.” So wrote the Japanese poet Kobayashi Issa, nearly three hundred years ago. He knew all about life. He lost his mother when he was three; he was sent to the city; he was robbed of his inheritance; his house burnt down; and in the space of a few years he lost three children and his wife. He wrote in another poem that everything he had loved ‘pricked like a bramble.’ The world does this. It confronts. It challenges. It hurts. It is sometimes blesses us, too. But how to respond? Issa came to the same conclusion as many other great artists over the centuries: through art. Art is what defines us as humans. There is no other species that indulges in self-expression in the same way we do. We paint, we act, we write, we sing. Of all these art forms there is none as clean and precise and exacting as poetry. It is distilled language and feeling. It is a painting in works, a snapshot of a moment, or a chronicle covering years. When I write there are two moments when the process is 2014/15 Hong Kong Budding Poets (English) Award at its most joyful: the beginning and the end. The beginning tingles with possibility; the ending is a kind of triumph. So it is with the Budding Poets’ Award. In the beginning we run workshops. Our tutors ran a variety of stimulating exercises – provoking (or perhaps a better work would be evoking) poems from the students. There is a beauty in the moment where a child who has never written before sits, writes, and then finds that they have written a poem. There is a shock and a joy – often because we suffer under the delusion that our life is normal, boring, not worth sharing for another. There is a wonder. There is sometimes and hopefully an urge to do that again. The excitement of possibility charged the autumn air. Of the thousands of poems that are written and submitted I get to meet all the shortlisted poets and hear them read their poems in their own voices. I get to hear how they came up with their ideas, what it meant to them to be shortlisted, how they framed their language to express what they wanted to say. And this is a thrilling moment as well. Those shortlisted poems are included in this anthology, but in a sense this is just the tip of the iceberg. Really all 2014/15 Hong Kong Budding Poets (English) Award the poets and teachers who took part in this process are winners. The teachers because they took time out of their high pressured schedules to devote to exciting and inspiring their students. And the students too, because to write and share a poem is to open one's self up, to express a feeling or a moment is to take a risk. There are funny poems here, sad poems, ones that are quirky and bitter sweet. The poets here are all risk takers and their work has been recognized in this collection. But beyond this, all the poets who took part have triumphed. They have affirmed what makes us uniquely human: to feel, to laugh, to love, to express and to share it with others. Justin Hill Assistant Professor (2014/15) Department of English, City University of Hong Kong 2014/15 Hong Kong Budding Poets (English) Award Speeches by Guests at Prize Presentation Ceremony Chan Pui Tin, Chief Curriculum Development Officer, Gifted Education Section, Curriculum Development Institute, Education Bureau Honourable Guests, Budding Poets, Colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen, I am delighted to welcome you to celebrate with the award winners in this ceremony of the 2014/15 Hong Kong Budding Poets (English) Award. We hope that the learning experiences from the Budding Poets Award will culminate in our award winners’ recitals and exchanges that will follow today. Celebrating its 10th birthday, we are glad that the Hong Kong Budding Poets Award has become a platform of demonstrating creativity in writing poetry. Speaking of poetry and creativity, let’s think about poetry with some playfulness. Please allow me to share with you a joke I read online: There was a teacher lecturing on map reading. After 2014/15 Hong Kong Budding Poets (English) Award explaining about latitude, longitude, degrees and minutes the teacher asked, ‘Suppose I asked you to meet me for lunch at 23 degrees, 4 minutes north latitude and 45 degrees, 15 minutes east longitude…?’ After a silence, a voice volunteered, ‘I guess you’d be eating alone.’ Learning from the joke, I am sure that none of us would think that writing a poem is just a matter of blending theoretical poetic devices unless we expect to have a voiceless, lonely piece of work. Poetry lives across time, not because of the techniques but because of a great range and depth of emotion it conveys in very few words, and the way it caresses our hearts. Poetry still lives in this 21st century. This Imagination Age leads us to learn from poetry from another angle. Supposing that creation, including writing, is about researching information, utilising skills and techniques, then what becomes important is what the author decides to choose and how to use such knowledge. Success lies in knowing what to include and, more importantly, what to leave out. That is the very core of the creativity, critical thinking, communication, 2014/15 Hong Kong Budding Poets (English) Award collaboration, information technology literacy, personal and social responsibilities demanded in this century. The moment we throw judgment and quality out the window, we are in trouble. What kind of trouble are we talking about here? I read a poem by a 14-year-old online lately. It tells us precisely: Our Generation Our generation will be known for nothing. Never will anybody say, We were the peak of mankind. That is wrong, the truth is Our generation was a failure. Thinking that We actually succeeded Is a waste. And we know Living only for money and power Is the way to go. Being loving, respectful, and kind Is a dumb thing to do. Forgetting about that time, Will not be easy, but we will try. Changing our world for the better Is something we never did. Giving up 2014/15 Hong Kong Budding Poets (English) Award Was how we handled our problems. Working hard Was a joke. We knew that People thought we couldn’t come back That might be true, Unless we turn things around So, this is how it will go if we reverse the poem from the bottom to the top: Unless we turn things around That might be true, People thought we couldn’t come back We knew that Was a joke. Working hard Was how we handled our problems. Giving up Is something we never did. Changing our world for the better Will not be easy, but we will try. Forgetting about that time, Is a dumb thing to do. Being loving, respectful, and kind 2014/15 Hong Kong Budding Poets (English) Award Is the way to go. Living only for money and power Is a waste. And we know We actually succeeded Thinking that Our generation was a failure. That is wrong, the truth is We were the peak of mankind. Never will anybody say, Our generation will be known for nothing. A coin always has two sides, and even more. We live in an era in need of reverse thinking not only for sake of creativity, but for promoting diversity and dialogue, respecting identity and heritage among generations and cultures. We were glad to find the open-mindedness and assertiveness integral to reverse thinking from what our budding poets put in their poems, what they shared in the interviews and their improvised writing this year. Education is seen as having a major impact on the creativeness of individuals and on the creative climate, as emphasised in the report, Design, Creativity and Innovation: A Scoreboard Approach by Maastricht University, The Netherlands in 2009. With the 2014/15 Hong Kong Budding Poets (English) Award concerted effort with The Hong Kong Academy for Gifted Education and universities such as City University of Hong Kong dedicated to unleashing the creative potential of young people, we hope that the Hong Kong Budding Poets Award will continue to be an inspiring platform for talented students in creative writing. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the judges of this year’s Award and the final adjudicators for their precious feedback. I congratulate all teachers, parents and budding poets. Stay curious in pursuit of excellence. Thank you. 2014/15 Hong Kong Budding Poets (English) Award Speeches by Guests at Prize Presentation Ceremony Iris Li, Corporate Services Manager, The Hong Kong Academy for Gifted Education Honourable Guests, Teachers, Students, Ladies and Gentlemen, It is my great honour and pleasure to take part in the 2014/15 Hong Kong Budding Poets Award Prize Presentation Ceremony this morning to share the joy and achievements of the event with all of you. It is an annual event widely recognised and warmly welcomed by primary schools, secondary schools and international schools in Hong Kong. This year, we have received over 1,400 high-quality entries; this overwhelming response demonstrates a keen interest among our students.