The Umbrellas and the Tear Gas

CURAmag has posted “The Umbrellas and the Tear Gas,” a feature of poems from the Occupy Central movement, now cleared, put together and introduced by Louise Law, with Henry Wei Leung. The poems are by Chung Kwok Keung, translated by Tammy Ho, and Chan Lai Kuen, translated by Amy K. Bell. “The two poems selected here are a reminder of the first days,” Law and Leung write. “They are also an artifact, a document of local voices speaking for themselves in the face of being revised by an official history.”

Metaphor is on strike
and there’s pepper spray to eat,
…hard to say how many peppers were used.
Tear gas tastes just like tear gas.

Click on the image for the poems.

AAWW’s Four Poems for the Umbrella Movement

Photo by David HillThe Asian American Writers’ Workshop has published four poems on the Occupy Central Umbrella Movement by Hongkong poets Tang Siu Wa, Chung Kwok Keung, Dorothy Tse, and Liu Waitong, as translated by Nicolette Wong, Tammy Ho Lai-Ming, and Amy K. Bell. Edited by Louise Law and introduced by Henry Wei Leung, here’s an excerpt (from Chung Kwok Keung, translated by Ho):

Let’s put silence to a coma in the dark of night
Let’s allow our voice, clear and loud, to be heard at dawn
Occupy, so that it can be put back in place
Sit down, and then stand up, one by one
When our names are called,
Each and every one of us, say: Here.

Click on the image for the full feature.