I was told that actually why CIS has
awesome poetry teachers and that I would
have offend people if we went with that
intro so not you guys but back when I
learned and in every other school then
this one specifically and not the harbor
school either sorry Christine but if you
left high school thinking that poetry is
boring and archaic and something that
happens far away in the past then I
really don’t blame you I want to figure
out kind of why that is and I want to
tell you why poetry doesn’t have to suck
imagine if you will if you went into a
history class and they taught you all
this interesting history all these Wars
and then you get to 1916 and they
stopped a hundred years from right now
and they never tell you anything else
you’d probably be sitting here wondering
how World War one ended if it ended it
all spoiler alert it did end I think the
Lannisters won I’m a little behind
something like I’m not sure someone will
tell me after I assume they’re history
teachers here or imagine if you went
into a chemistry class and everything
you learned was about phlogiston which
is the theory that some stuff inside
stuff has fire in it and that’s why some
things combust and other things don’t
you never learned about atoms and you
never learned about molecular bonding
you would be a pretty crappy chemist
when you left high school and you
probably would think the chemistry
wasn’t really that interesting wasn’t
relatable and wasn’t modern we kind of
do that with poetry if you’ve studied
poetry in high school you probably
recognize people like this that’s
Wordsworth Blake and some guy called
shakey spear or something not sure and
they have a lot in common they’re all
white they’re all male they’re all
English and they’re all long dead now is
anyone in the audience
white male English long dead no
literally no one there is something
that’s
little bit divorced from the experience
that we have in our lives and that the
kids that you’re teaching have in their
lives and the stuff that these guys have
written and it’s great stuff I actually
I love the poetry of actually all three
of these I’m not saying that we
shouldn’t study it but we almost
exclusively study it I think part of the
reason is that poetry has as so many
other subjects have been pushed through
this filter of academic testing
standardization and all of that and it’s
not the kind of thing you should
standardize if you want to teach poetry
the only way you can do it is have sort
of easy cookie cutter answers that you
can test to see whether the kids have
fed it back you know what does this
metaphor mean oh cool you got the right
answer that’s what the metaphor meant
and the effect of the poem it’s harder
to do that if you’re gonna go with sort
of modern real poetry and what’s going
on and spoken word so if that’s where
you’ve encountered in high school I out
I want to tell you that poetry can first
of all be modern poetry can be about
things that are going on right now that
are real in the real world poetry
doesn’t have to be about the beauty of a
flower or about Shakespeare pining for
some girl that you don’t know or
comparing her to a flower I don’t know
why it’s always flowers it really
doesn’t have to be and I’ve reminded me
of this image I don’t know if you’ve
seen it it really can see it fully it
went viral I think like a month ago and
it’s a bunch of kids sitting on their
phone with a gorgeous Rembrandt painting
behind it went viral because you know
the older generation and and kids on
their phones and blah blah blah blah
doesn’t matter and it’s funny to me for
two reasons the first is it turned out
that the phones were running an app that
is the guided tour of the Louvre so
actually the entire complaint was wrong
they weren’t engaging with the material
I feel like we often don’t give the
younger generation enough credit that
they actually actively do that a lot of
people do the second is this the phone
is actually more interesting than the
painting it just actually is if
Rembrandt walked into that room he
wouldn’t care about any of the paintings
he would be like this little device
gives you access to the sum of human
knowledge at your finger
tips by sending a signal into space and
then that’s cool and to think that
that’s cool there’s nothing wrong with
that and it’s cooler than flowers I’m
gonna say almost objectively so maybe
disagree and that’s fine
the other thing poetry can be that you
don’t get from those two guys is it can
be non serious they tend to write very
very serious poetry it’s always love of
war you know it has those topics and I
think part of the reason is it’s it’s
hard to study someone like shel
silverstein but I think it’s worth
trying because I think kids can engage
with that poetry more and a lot of them
want to they want to write silly poetry
they want to write about minecraft or
whatever or an animal that has you know
three heads and ten butts or you know
and that’s fine then great poetry is
written about that nowadays you go to
I’ve run poetry and as you go to them
you get both the silly and the serious
you get the highly structured and you
get the complete no structure at all
stuff and the other thing poetry can be
that we don’t really let it be often in
school is locally relevant you’ve
probably read a lot more Shakespeare
than you have read poems about the
umbrella revolution and that’s not to
say that there aren’t tons of really
great poems being written about the
umbrella revolution that there aren’t
there isn’t art being made of the
umbrella revolution and there isn’t
short stories and novels and stuff being
written about that there are I’ve seen
them I’ve engaged with them there are
publications that are local that have
put out you know entire journals that
are just collections of local poets
engaging with that stuff and if you want
kids to care about poetry and not leave
high school thing like poetry is boring
it has to be relevant
you know 16th century England is just
not that relevant to a kid like like the
girls were up on stage singing or any of
the kids you teach Hong Kong is relevant
what’s going on their real lives is
relevant technology is relevant and not
only can poetry be that it is if you go
out and engage with poetry after high
school in the real life you go to an
open mic you go
spoken word event it’s all relevant some
of it is non serious and not highly
structured it functions on the local
level if you go to an open mic in Boston
or in Hong Kong you’re going to hear
very different things if you go to an
open mic in England right now it will
probably be all about brexit and that
will be interesting and basically I
would like and it’s a big request almost
but high school poetry and I wish it had
a little more for me it I actually came
out loving poetry so it’s nothing
against my teachers either but it should
try to be these things it should try and
engage what poetry is like in the real
world we do that with the history you
learn about how it affects current
political situations and how to deal
with that stuff in the real world and I
would like to finish off with
appropriately a local poem written by a
local poet about not only Hong Kong but
about this exact topic it’s my very good
friend of mine called Vishal Nanda a
really excellent local poet you can see
if you’ve ever been on the local poetry
scene and it has only been minorly
censored for swear words it is called
urban no subs and I have not memorized
his poem but I loved it I didn’t know I
was allowed to be angry that I didn’t
have a voice I remember that I remember
being made guilty for who I was as if it
was my fault it makes me realize how
many people still are I don’t like your
poems about animals
I barely seen any damn animals I don’t
like your poems that seem to exercise
mobile phones and the Internet like
we’re all prancing through some field
the biggest field i’ve seen in hong kong
is the middle of victoria park and it’s
just dirt and grass your poems offend me
it’s like you’ve trimmed away all the
actual life and left behind what you
think the leavings of other poems are
from other times like rather than look
outside you bury yourself in a book that
foreword knock-kneed fold it over until
your peering into your own
evil it’s like you refuse to see the
obvious that rather than glance around
the MTR you look down at your phone
forget that you’re thumbing an app
that’s sending a signal into space to
write about I don’t know ducks or
something
it’s colonialism yeah I went there let
me explain what I mean you transported
your farms to my city they call it
plantation road up on the peak because
the British brought back their own trees
planted the seeds so they could cover up
the tropical Tiger spawning jungle with
classic British whatever-the-hell proud
to be boring Englishness I’m part of the
problem but I’ll admit to be virus and
meme I’ll continue to try and peer
through the smog and work out exactly
what my reality your reality our reality
is but your poems offend me it’s like
you’ve speared your own eyes to spite
the world it pisses me off how the vast
majority of books and stores are about
Europe or the u.s. how I can’t find five
novels about growing up in PUC fool um
watching cyberport metastasize over the
years
y’all show up and skip to being
mesmerized by wet markets and dim sum I
want to read about underage teenage
flights to lan kwai fung but i don’t
want to write about them it’s scary
trying to speak about something others
haven’t spoken about yet it’s hard to
tell whether it makes any sense and
instead of trying so hard to exotic i
well oh it’s hard to tell whether it
makes any sense I wouldn’t mind if you
that visit kowtow to your senses and
instead of trying so hard to exotic I my
home take the time to listen not to the
signs and the cliches but deeper still
to the corners and the creepers and the
lonely and the lost the marginalized
which has always been the human and not
the cost it pisses me off how so many
stories begin with descriptions inside
suburban homes I’ve never known sub just
urban they are half-measures and throw
backs I’m sorry but this city is a
window into the future we’re a trailer
of what’s to come so if you come here
realize where you’re moving on from this
is my Hong
tongue sounds like some add that play in
the minibus like a dancing virus causing
a net number of people to go out and buy
this product this new lie this thing
that points upwards to happiness or
penthouses of mainland billionaires it
pisses me off
how much is silent and how much is noise
I’ve drawn a line not in the sand
because repulse Bay is covered in dog
crap and cigarettes and broken glass not
on the pavement because we’re too
uptight or law-abiding but in a book no
one has read yet in this poem I’ve drawn
a line and I’m staying on my side of it
thank you
[Applause]
awesome poetry teachers and that I would
have offend people if we went with that
intro so not you guys but back when I
learned and in every other school then
this one specifically and not the harbor
school either sorry Christine but if you
left high school thinking that poetry is
boring and archaic and something that
happens far away in the past then I
really don’t blame you I want to figure
out kind of why that is and I want to
tell you why poetry doesn’t have to suck
imagine if you will if you went into a
history class and they taught you all
this interesting history all these Wars
and then you get to 1916 and they
stopped a hundred years from right now
and they never tell you anything else
you’d probably be sitting here wondering
how World War one ended if it ended it
all spoiler alert it did end I think the
Lannisters won I’m a little behind
something like I’m not sure someone will
tell me after I assume they’re history
teachers here or imagine if you went
into a chemistry class and everything
you learned was about phlogiston which
is the theory that some stuff inside
stuff has fire in it and that’s why some
things combust and other things don’t
you never learned about atoms and you
never learned about molecular bonding
you would be a pretty crappy chemist
when you left high school and you
probably would think the chemistry
wasn’t really that interesting wasn’t
relatable and wasn’t modern we kind of
do that with poetry if you’ve studied
poetry in high school you probably
recognize people like this that’s
Wordsworth Blake and some guy called
shakey spear or something not sure and
they have a lot in common they’re all
white they’re all male they’re all
English and they’re all long dead now is
anyone in the audience
white male English long dead no
literally no one there is something
that’s
little bit divorced from the experience
that we have in our lives and that the
kids that you’re teaching have in their
lives and the stuff that these guys have
written and it’s great stuff I actually
I love the poetry of actually all three
of these I’m not saying that we
shouldn’t study it but we almost
exclusively study it I think part of the
reason is that poetry has as so many
other subjects have been pushed through
this filter of academic testing
standardization and all of that and it’s
not the kind of thing you should
standardize if you want to teach poetry
the only way you can do it is have sort
of easy cookie cutter answers that you
can test to see whether the kids have
fed it back you know what does this
metaphor mean oh cool you got the right
answer that’s what the metaphor meant
and the effect of the poem it’s harder
to do that if you’re gonna go with sort
of modern real poetry and what’s going
on and spoken word so if that’s where
you’ve encountered in high school I out
I want to tell you that poetry can first
of all be modern poetry can be about
things that are going on right now that
are real in the real world poetry
doesn’t have to be about the beauty of a
flower or about Shakespeare pining for
some girl that you don’t know or
comparing her to a flower I don’t know
why it’s always flowers it really
doesn’t have to be and I’ve reminded me
of this image I don’t know if you’ve
seen it it really can see it fully it
went viral I think like a month ago and
it’s a bunch of kids sitting on their
phone with a gorgeous Rembrandt painting
behind it went viral because you know
the older generation and and kids on
their phones and blah blah blah blah
doesn’t matter and it’s funny to me for
two reasons the first is it turned out
that the phones were running an app that
is the guided tour of the Louvre so
actually the entire complaint was wrong
they weren’t engaging with the material
I feel like we often don’t give the
younger generation enough credit that
they actually actively do that a lot of
people do the second is this the phone
is actually more interesting than the
painting it just actually is if
Rembrandt walked into that room he
wouldn’t care about any of the paintings
he would be like this little device
gives you access to the sum of human
knowledge at your finger
tips by sending a signal into space and
then that’s cool and to think that
that’s cool there’s nothing wrong with
that and it’s cooler than flowers I’m
gonna say almost objectively so maybe
disagree and that’s fine
the other thing poetry can be that you
don’t get from those two guys is it can
be non serious they tend to write very
very serious poetry it’s always love of
war you know it has those topics and I
think part of the reason is it’s it’s
hard to study someone like shel
silverstein but I think it’s worth
trying because I think kids can engage
with that poetry more and a lot of them
want to they want to write silly poetry
they want to write about minecraft or
whatever or an animal that has you know
three heads and ten butts or you know
and that’s fine then great poetry is
written about that nowadays you go to
I’ve run poetry and as you go to them
you get both the silly and the serious
you get the highly structured and you
get the complete no structure at all
stuff and the other thing poetry can be
that we don’t really let it be often in
school is locally relevant you’ve
probably read a lot more Shakespeare
than you have read poems about the
umbrella revolution and that’s not to
say that there aren’t tons of really
great poems being written about the
umbrella revolution that there aren’t
there isn’t art being made of the
umbrella revolution and there isn’t
short stories and novels and stuff being
written about that there are I’ve seen
them I’ve engaged with them there are
publications that are local that have
put out you know entire journals that
are just collections of local poets
engaging with that stuff and if you want
kids to care about poetry and not leave
high school thing like poetry is boring
it has to be relevant
you know 16th century England is just
not that relevant to a kid like like the
girls were up on stage singing or any of
the kids you teach Hong Kong is relevant
what’s going on their real lives is
relevant technology is relevant and not
only can poetry be that it is if you go
out and engage with poetry after high
school in the real life you go to an
open mic you go
spoken word event it’s all relevant some
of it is non serious and not highly
structured it functions on the local
level if you go to an open mic in Boston
or in Hong Kong you’re going to hear
very different things if you go to an
open mic in England right now it will
probably be all about brexit and that
will be interesting and basically I
would like and it’s a big request almost
but high school poetry and I wish it had
a little more for me it I actually came
out loving poetry so it’s nothing
against my teachers either but it should
try to be these things it should try and
engage what poetry is like in the real
world we do that with the history you
learn about how it affects current
political situations and how to deal
with that stuff in the real world and I
would like to finish off with
appropriately a local poem written by a
local poet about not only Hong Kong but
about this exact topic it’s my very good
friend of mine called Vishal Nanda a
really excellent local poet you can see
if you’ve ever been on the local poetry
scene and it has only been minorly
censored for swear words it is called
urban no subs and I have not memorized
his poem but I loved it I didn’t know I
was allowed to be angry that I didn’t
have a voice I remember that I remember
being made guilty for who I was as if it
was my fault it makes me realize how
many people still are I don’t like your
poems about animals
I barely seen any damn animals I don’t
like your poems that seem to exercise
mobile phones and the Internet like
we’re all prancing through some field
the biggest field i’ve seen in hong kong
is the middle of victoria park and it’s
just dirt and grass your poems offend me
it’s like you’ve trimmed away all the
actual life and left behind what you
think the leavings of other poems are
from other times like rather than look
outside you bury yourself in a book that
foreword knock-kneed fold it over until
your peering into your own
evil it’s like you refuse to see the
obvious that rather than glance around
the MTR you look down at your phone
forget that you’re thumbing an app
that’s sending a signal into space to
write about I don’t know ducks or
something
it’s colonialism yeah I went there let
me explain what I mean you transported
your farms to my city they call it
plantation road up on the peak because
the British brought back their own trees
planted the seeds so they could cover up
the tropical Tiger spawning jungle with
classic British whatever-the-hell proud
to be boring Englishness I’m part of the
problem but I’ll admit to be virus and
meme I’ll continue to try and peer
through the smog and work out exactly
what my reality your reality our reality
is but your poems offend me it’s like
you’ve speared your own eyes to spite
the world it pisses me off how the vast
majority of books and stores are about
Europe or the u.s. how I can’t find five
novels about growing up in PUC fool um
watching cyberport metastasize over the
years
y’all show up and skip to being
mesmerized by wet markets and dim sum I
want to read about underage teenage
flights to lan kwai fung but i don’t
want to write about them it’s scary
trying to speak about something others
haven’t spoken about yet it’s hard to
tell whether it makes any sense and
instead of trying so hard to exotic i
well oh it’s hard to tell whether it
makes any sense I wouldn’t mind if you
that visit kowtow to your senses and
instead of trying so hard to exotic I my
home take the time to listen not to the
signs and the cliches but deeper still
to the corners and the creepers and the
lonely and the lost the marginalized
which has always been the human and not
the cost it pisses me off how so many
stories begin with descriptions inside
suburban homes I’ve never known sub just
urban they are half-measures and throw
backs I’m sorry but this city is a
window into the future we’re a trailer
of what’s to come so if you come here
realize where you’re moving on from this
is my Hong
tongue sounds like some add that play in
the minibus like a dancing virus causing
a net number of people to go out and buy
this product this new lie this thing
that points upwards to happiness or
penthouses of mainland billionaires it
pisses me off
how much is silent and how much is noise
I’ve drawn a line not in the sand
because repulse Bay is covered in dog
crap and cigarettes and broken glass not
on the pavement because we’re too
uptight or law-abiding but in a book no
one has read yet in this poem I’ve drawn
a line and I’m staying on my side of it
thank you
[Applause]
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