Dr Tammy Lai-Ming Ho (何麗明) has been named Visiting Scholar at the University of St Andrews, the third-oldest university in the English-speaking world. She will be working with Professor Gregory Lee, Founding Professor and Head of the Department of Chinese Studies at the university, on the research project “A Cultural History of the People’s Republic…
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Announcement: New Lecture Series “Recomposing the Self”
A new exciting Speakers’ Series organised by the “Creativity, Self and Society” research group of the Faculty of Arts (香港浸會大學文學院 “創意,個人和社會” 研究組舉辦 Zoom 傑出講者系列) will consist of four Zoom talks, open to all, starting in March through June, featuring the following outstanding speakers: New style pop star Serrini, Thursday 18 March 2021 (4-5:15pm), “Compose a Self…
Announcement: ENG professor Tammy Lai-Ming Ho and ENG Alumna Cheng Tim Tim Mentioned in Tatler Hong Kong Article “7 Female Poets From Hong Kong To Know”
Tammy Lai-Ming Ho, an Associate Professor at the Department of English Language and Literature, and Cheng Tim Tim, an alumna of the department, have been named amongst the seven female poets from Hong Kong to know by Tatler Hong Kong. The other five poets are Mary Jean Chan (whose Flèche won Costa Book Award for…
Announcement: Tammy Lai-Ming Ho and Jason S Polley are Poetry Mentors for After_
Associate Professors Dr Tammy Lai-Ming Ho and Dr Jason S Polley are amongst two of the mentors for the After_ programme, which is organised by Zolima Citymag and financially support from Design Trust. The programme asked selected young Hongkongers to ‘reflect on the pandemic’s impact in prose, poetry, video and photography’: It was an opportunity to…
“What I Am Thankful For?” by Tammy Lai-Ming Ho
Last week, I was asked by Albert Wan, friend and co-owner of Bleak House Books, to tell him what I am thankful for this year. He asked others in Hong Kong as well, such as Antony Dapiran (author of City on Fire: The Fight for Hong Kong), Louise Law (author of As If), Pete Spurrier…
“On Xi Xi” by Tammy Lai-Ming Ho
Short speech delivered on Thursday 7 March 2019, at the 2019 Newman Festival (7-8 March 2019, University of Oklahoma): First, I must say that I am very honoured to be invited to be one of the jurors of the Newman Prize for Chinese Literature 2019, focusing on poetry. I didn’t need to think twice in…
Announcement: Tammy Ho Lai-Ming Appointed Advisor to The Leeds Centre for New Chinese Writing
Dr Tammy Ho Lai-Ming (何麗明), an Associate Professor at the Department of English, has been appointed an advisor to The Leeds Centre for New Chinese Writing (利茲大學當代華語文學研究中心). The Centre is based at the University of Leeds and it is run by a managerial committee, assisted by an international Advisory Board. It organises talks, readings, workshops, symposia and…
Pride of Place: Tammy Ho Lai-Ming (1)
Pride of Place: A series in which teaching staff and students from the English Department reflect on a place in Hong Kong. [Read all entries.] [Revisit the “Pet Sounds” series.] [Revisit the “Headspace” series.] [Revisit the “Ongoing” series.] [Revisit the “Interrogative” series.] No matter how far away, temporally or spatially, I am from the…
“On Kingsley Ng’s after the deluge” by Tammy Ho Lai-Ming
It is easy to forget, in a city as modern and seemingly functional as Hong Kong, how it has been shaped by a long succession of disasters, both natural and man-made. There have been outbreaks of plague, the notorious Happy Valley racecourse fire, which took place 100 years ago this month, other conflagrations such as…
“China and Its Nether Zones” by Tammy Ho Lai-Ming
The migrant wants to live. —John Berger, A Seventh Man, p. 36 In the Twilight Zone episode “The Eye of the Beholder”, a patient, whom viewers have been led to believe is horrendously disfigured, sits surrounded by medical staff eager to see if surgery to ‘correct’ her appearance has been successful. Unfortunately, the woman remains hideously ugly, and…
Announcement: Members of the ENG Department Join the Cha Writing Workshop Series
Three teaching staff from the Department of English, Tammy Lai-Ming Ho (Assistant Professor), Jason S Polley (Associate Professor) and Lian-Hee Wee (Professor) have joined the Cha Writing Workshop Series as mentors to run workshops for local schoolchildren and economically disadvantaged groups in the city. The series is supported by the English Departments at The Chinese University of…
“Philippe Parreno’s Films” by Tammy Ho Lai-Ming
The exhibit by the French-Algerian artist Philippe Parreno I went to see is made up of four video installations. While most video works presented in a gallery are continuously played on a loop, these four videos are projected in order and the viewers are led from room to room by lights turning on and off…
Announcement: Tammy Lai-Ming Ho will be co-editing Twin Cities, a collection of poetry from Hong Kong and Singapore
Perhaps Hong Kong is a city of cinema. From the neo-noir neon stylings of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, to the stylised longing of early Wong Kar Wai, through the boom years of Cinema City and larger-than-life film stars, she has played host to countless cinematic moments with her cosmopolitan beauty. And perhaps Singapore is a…
“A Secret About a Secret About a Secret” by Tammy Ho Lai-Ming
Jo Shapcott’s poem “Myself Photographed” begins with an affirmative statement: “So this is me.” This line draws our attention to the subject of the photograph, although it does so with a slightly wry, or perhaps uncertain, tone provided by the word “So.” The next line, “In the field after we got lost,” continues this tone,…
“Cohesion” by Tammy Ho Lai-Ming
This was the speech I gave at the inauguration ceremony of Eminence on 19 February 2014. Thank you for allowing me to speak to you today. It is a great honour indeed. I am glad to see that so many of you managed to come tonight and gather together as one group. This is a…
Headspace: Tammy Ho Lai-Ming
Headspace: A series in which teaching staff and students from the English Department write about a place or space they go to write, read, study or create. [Read all entries.] [Revisit the “Ongoing” series.] [Revisit the “Interrogative” series.] A room with graffitied walls. Inside this room the dogs bark. A room cluttered with porcelain figurines….
An Interview with Tammy Ho Lai-Ming
{This interview was originally published on Peel Street Poetry.} . Denis Tsoi: What was the impetus or defining moment that made you pursue your writing further? Tammy Ho: As I have mentioned elsewhere, I wrote almost exclusively in Chinese until university and it was mostly just silly scribbling. When I was an undergraduate student at…
Announcement: Tammy Ho received Young Artist Award in Literary Arts
Tammy Ho Lai-Ming won the Award for Young Artist in Literary Arts 2015, presented by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council. The ceremony took place on Thursday 21 April 2016 and was broadcast on TVB Jade on Saturday 7 May 2016 (see video below). In response to receiving the award, Tammy expressed her gratitude to…
“Bookworm Moments” by Tammy Lai-Ming Ho
Earlier this month, funded by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council, I attended the Beijing and Suzhou Bookworm Literary Festivals. In Beijing, I was a speaker on the panels “Poetry Around the World” and “Writing Place” and in Suzhou, I was on the panels “Agree to be Different!” and “Literature Across Frontiers”. During my stay…
“Dreaming, Holding A Letter From A Ten-year-old Me” by Tammy Ho Lai-Ming
“The Child in Her Gentle Slumber” (1840) by George Cattermold, published in Dickens’s The Old Curiosity Shop. More about this plate can be found here. – Do you remember dreams well? What is a recent dream that you remember? . I had a nightmare, which consisted of the following images: . Someone tries to…
Ongoing Moments: Tammy Ho Lai-Ming
Ongoing Moments: A series in which teaching staff and students from the English Department respond to a photograph of their choice. [Read all entries.] [Revisit the “Interrogative” series.] . One of the songs that has been adopted by the protesters in Hong Kong during the Umbrella Revolution is “Do You Hear the People Sing,” from…
“So Much Depends Upon A Pretty Heroine” by Tammy Ho Lai-Ming
Everyone knows the story of Snow White. A wicked stepmother,1 upon finding out from her magic mirror that her stepdaughter, Snow White (who is ‘as white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as the wood in the window frame’), is fairer than herself, orders a huntsman to kill the girl. The man, influenced by…
“How Honest Are You In Your Diary?” by Tammy Ho Lai-Ming
Someone once told me a story from Greg Egan‘s Axiomatic. The story, titled “The Hundred Light-Year Diary”, is about a future invention that allows people to send messages to themselves from the future. Every person can send about 100 words every day. The protagonist of the story is a guy who has been writing a diary…
“A Wintry Hypothesis” by Tammy Ho Lai-Ming
On 9th January 2015, I became an aunt for the first time. My youngest sister, Ying, gave birth to a baby girl having been in labour for over fifteen hours. On 9th January 2015, I gained a new identity—I am now my little niece’s “Big Aunt Mother” (大姨媽). It sounds so old. When I first…
“Bamboo in Repose” by Tammy Ho Lai-Ming
Photo by Sammy Wan These pictures, taken by Sammy Wan and posted by Real Hong Kong News on Facebook, show a group of construction workers building a bamboo ‘matrix’ at Admiralty, replacing the iron barricades that the police had cleared earlier this morning (Monday 13 October 2014). Hong Kong has long been known as a forest…
Umbrella Uprising — What We Think
. I have run out of umbrellas to lend to my students, braving all weathers, all scorn, for a future they no longer have any option but to believe in. Now it is my heart I would shelter them with. I do so happily, without reservation. They were the first, and will be the last,…
“De-seats” by Tammy Ho Lai-Ming
Seats that I have seen but never sat on. . . ::::: Tammy Ho Lai-Ming is Assistant Professor at the Department of English Language and Literature. She is the administrator of Agora. [Click here to read all entries by or about Tammy.]
“The Concave and Convex of the Lovers’ Bodies: A Reading of Three Paintings” by Tammy Ho Lai-Ming
“Mushrooms by the Sea” (1931) by Filippo de Paris. Oil on canvas, 53 x 63 cm. I spent a long time looking at this painting, which has been compared to works by Salvador Dali. I was particularly interested in the large sky and beach in comparison to the relatively small sandwiched sea — an ungenerous…
“John Gave Rachel A Book” by Tammy Ho Lai-Ming
John gave Rachel a book, ten years ago John gave Rachel a book Of poetry— Western Wind: An Introduction to Poetry On the second page of the book John had written, in green: For Rachel, who doesn’t need An introduction to anything— Certainly not to poetry— With memories of all the Places we talked about…
“Macau Revisited” by Tammy Ho Lai-Ming
[Also see “Macau Impressions”.] Michael: I’ll bet you a dollar I’ve been to the place where you were born. Elsa: Chefoo. Michael: It’s on the China coast. Chefoo. It’s the second wickedest city in the world. Elsa: What’s the first? Michael: Macao. —The Lady from Shanghai (1947), dr. Orson Welles ::::: Tammy Ho Lai-Ming is…
Department of English, Hong Kong Baptist University 