JASON S POLLEY allocates his time to reading, scuba diving, practicing yoga, and getting tattooed. He began what was to become refrain in early 1997 while backpacking the Indian Subcontinent, but shelved it later that year to devote himself to the study and composition of academic prose.

He returned to his lone work of fiction in order to meet the deadline for the 2009 Proverse Prize.

Since 1998 he has lived in Guangzhou, Montreal , Bogota, Guayaquil and Hong Kong . He currently teaches Literary Theory, American Culture and Contemporary Fiction at Hong Kong Baptist University.

refrain was launched on 23 November 2010. His second work of creative non-fiction, cemetery miss you, was published by Proverse in November 2011. In the form of transcripts from audio recordings, it recounts the first year or so of a Pakistani illegal's experiences in Hong Kong.

Edited videos of Polley's talks around his two Proverse books (part of the Proverse Readers' Club series, supported by Hong Kong Arts Development Council) have been uploaded to youtube. To view them, copy and paste the following into your browser window:

https://youtu.be/NUjkgQrPI98 (refrain)

https://youtu.be/p0JHdg0hkMA (cemetery miss you)

BOOKS BY JASON S POLLEY PUBLISHED BY PROVERSE HONG KONG

cemetery miss you

refrain

From some reviews of Jason S Polley's refrain 

 "Polley’s verse betrays the eyes of a true traveler for whom all experience seems new and full of wonder." --  Review by Zachary Abram , in The Bull Calf, June 2012, http://www.thebullcalfreview.ca/jasonspolley.htm

 “... It is with astonishment and admiration that the reader witnesses how a thing as simple as a mere, nondescript gap between English words can be manipulated to recreate India on paper—yes, that is what Polley has done! Some "unseen longgone quickcrafty hands" tell you all there is to know about the writer's fast-receding backpack on a slow train standing by a long platform. But if that seems to you the full measure of this "houdinied" play of spaces and words, then witness this: "restaurant dishwasherwallah squattingworkingsinging in garbagejuice a mere metre away from openworld litterlatrine."...The whole of one of old Dehli's aspects is captured in in this one line....a worthy read over several occasions.” ‘Capturing India: Jason S Polley's refrain’by Ankur Agarwal. (Asian Cha,‘Reviews’, June 2015 (Issue 28)) http://www.asiancha.com/content/view/2094/505/

JASON S. POLLEY was the featured writer at the Proverse Readers' Club at Dymocks Books and Cafe, Discovery Bay, Lantau, Hong Kong on 12 March 2016, when he spoke about his travel narrative in verse, 'refrain'. Polley also spoke at the Proverse Readers' Club on 16 April 2016, about his work, cemetery miss you, when he explained how the format of the book he wrote, based on stories he was told, was influenced by his reading as a scholar of contemporary literature.

He gave a reading at Kubrick, Hong Kong, on 27 March 2011. For photos, video clips and a write-up, see:

At the Proverse Readers’ Club, Dymocks Books and Cafe, Discovery Bay, Hong Kong, Saturday, 16 April, Jason S Polley told us about his meeting with an illegal Pakistani immigrant in Hong Kong and the stories that he heard from him.