Awardee:
Dr Antony Huen Pak-hang

School:
School of Arts and Social Sciences

Awarded paper:
“The ‘Old Hong Kong’ and ‘A Gold-Sifting Bird’: Hong Kong and Chinese Ekphrasis in Contemporary British Poetry”

Award:
Wasafiri Essay Prize

Details:
Dr Antony Huen Pak-hang, Research Assistant Professor of School of Arts and Social Sciences was awarded the inaugural Wasafiri Essay Prize for his paper “The ‘Old Hong Kong’ and ‘A Gold-Sifting Bird’: Hong Kong and Chinese Ekphrasis in Contemporary British Poetry”. The article defined two kinds of ekphrasis, namely the Hong Kong and Chinese ekphrasis. Through analyzing the work of some British-Chinese poets who are either born in or emigrated to the UK, the essay enriches and complicates our understanding of the close connections between contemporary British poetry, cultural memory, and diaspora, and the complex geopolitical relations between Hong Kong, mainland China, and the UK.

Established by the quarterly British literary magazine Wasafiri, the Wasafiri Essay Prize aims to encourage and award innovative critical essays across the field of international contemporary literature by early career researchers.