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Poetry 1

Poetry communicates much in relatively few words. Proverse Poets come from very varied backgrounds, have a considerable range of techniques, and communicate very different experiences. Take a look!

In each of the "Proverse Poetry" pages, the titles are arranged mainly in alphabetical order of title (ignoring "the" "a", "of" and similar words). 

Most Proverse  titles can be seen and purchased at the Proverse page on the website of our Hong Kong based distributor, the Chinese University of Hong Kong Press:  https://cup.cuhk.edu.hk/Proversehk

You can also find most Proverse titles on various amazon sites as well as those of other online retailers.

 

To purchase from this Proverse site, please see the sub-pages, Poetry 1, Poetry 2, Poetry 3 and Mingled Voices Series.

 

  • Astra and Sebastian: An Epic Love Story by L.W. Illsley (UK)

    Modern epic poem. An adventure in the tradition of an ancient hero myth. Documents the change from child to adult.  Illustrated by Shelley Knowles-Dixon. Pbk.

    "Imaginative, phantasmagoric verse on a grand scale" -- Mary-Jane Newton

    International Proverse Prize Finalist 2010

    You can purchase this book by using the PayPal button below.

    • $
    • In stock
  • Chasing Light by Patricia Glinton-Meicholas

    Preface by Sir Arthur Foulkes, GovernorGeneral,Bahamas

    Proverse Prize Finalist, 2012

    Format: pbk.120pp.

    Pub. date: 19 November 2013

    Bahamian-born PATRICIA GLINTON-MEICHOLAS, writer, editor, cultural critic and academic, is an honours graduate of the University of the West Indies and the University of Miami. Recognized nationally for her contributions to Bahamian literature, she was first winner of the Bahamas Cacique Award for Writing (1995) and recipient of a Silver Jubilee of Independence Medal for Literature (1998). She was the first woman to present the prestigious Sir Lynden Pindling Memorial Lecture (Nassau, 2005). Her books include An Evening in Guanima (short stories based on Bahamian folktale motifs), the novel, A Shift in the Light, and two volumes of poetry (No Vacancy in Paradise and Robin's Song). She co-wrote Bahamian Art 1492 to 1992 and contributed to the Macmillan Dictionary of Art. Her story "The Gaulin Wife" appears in the Penguin anthology Under the Storyteller's Spell (1988). A monograph on Bahamian folktales was published in the Encuentros series of the Inter-American Development Bank Cultural Centre. Her most recent book is Years of Favour, a 264-page history and pictorial of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of The Bahamas 1960-2010 (with P. Neko Meicholas and Carla Glinton). She has also written and directed several historical documentaries for television.

    CHASING LIGHT is Patricia Glinton-Meicholas' third book of poetry and a finalist for the International Proverse Prize 2012. A challenging and controversial complexity of opinion pervades the collection, accurately signaled by the double-entendre of the title. Taken as a whole, the poems express concern for humankind worldwide, with a particular emphasis on the life of women, particularly those with an African orCaribbean heritage. Glinton-Meicholas speaks equally for those she imagines to live colourless, passionless lives and those whose private relations are ample and fulfilling. She responds to regional and international events, particularly the troubles brought by local politics and attitudes, and by war. The poems show a person passionately aware and caring, conscious of deity in various manifestations and hoping for the world's salvation from this source. Nevertheless she acknowledges that man has free-will and that it is for man to exercise his free-will to solve or avoid problems. The writing -- with occasional lines in creole -- is sophisticated and rewards close attention from the reader.

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  • China Suite and other Poems by Gillian Bickley (UK and HK)

    

    Poems about people, art and life, as seen and experienced in Hong Kong, China, Thailand, Hawai'i , Mexico, Scotland, Andorra. Supported by Hong Kong Arts Development Council. Pbk with audio CDs of all poems, read by their author.

    "An unnoticed observer, she trespasses ethnic taboos and social no-nos, and writes down whatever she sees without getting caught -- in a graceful way" -- Elbert S. P. Lee

    You can purchase this book by using the PayPal button below.

  • For the Record and Other Poems of Hong Kong by Gillian Bickley (UK and HK)

    Hong Kong experiences and personal events. Pbk with two audio CDs. Supported by Hong Kong Arts Development Council.

    "Gillian Bickley has the sharp eye and the strong stomach of the true realist. Brilliantly observed. Not even the American minimalist William Carlos Williams could zero in on and capture a detail with more panache. A thought-provoking and entertaining contribution to Hong Kong literature." -- David Wilson, Sunday Morning Post

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  • Heart to Heart: Poems by Patty Ho (HK)

    

    First poetry collection by a Hong Kong solicitor wiuth an interest in music, poetry and philosophy. Illustrated by her sister, Annie Ho.  Supported by Hong Kong Arts Development Council. Pbk,

    "A dynamic conversation between visual and written texts about the emotions and values we all share" -- Flora Mak, in, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal

    You can purchase this book by using the PayPay button below.

    

     

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  • Home, Away, Elsewhere by Vaughan Rapatahana (HK and NZ-Aotearoa)

    

    "Poems with attitude ... passionate, uncompromising and sardonic" -- James Norcliffe

    By a New Zealander who has lived for many years in a variety of countries and now lives and works in Hong Kong.

    You can purchase this book by using the PayPal button below.

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  • Immortelle and Bhandaaraa Poems by Lelawattee Manoo-Rahming (The Bahamas, Trinidad)

    

    "Guides the reader through national, regional, and familial history while simultaneously releaving, mourning and celebrating her diverse cultural inheritance" -- Sandra Pouchet Paquet

    You can purchase this book by using the PayPal button below.

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  • Of Leaves & Ashes by Patty Ho (Hong Kong)

                  
    Of Leaves & Ashes by Patty Ho

    OF LEAVES & ASHES by Patty Ho (何世嫻) is a collection of poems: among these, some relate to philosophy and some to old Chinese poems to which Patty Ho has added new thoughts. Others are more musical and are additionally presented on the accompanying CD as songs.

    Love and pain, dreams and disillusion, leaves and memories, ashes and hopes, encounters and homecomings, sorrow and beauty... all are interwoven in the poems in this book.

    The notes contain Patty Ho’s translations of the Chinese poems quoted in the book.


    You can purchase this paperback book w. CD by using the PayPal button below.

    • $
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  • Life Lines by Shahilla Shariff

    Proverse Prize Finalist 2011.

    LIFE LINES is Shahilla Shariff's first collection of poetry. Drawing on her life experiences, it explores themes of love, grief, dislocation and transition. Her work addresses the vast and unruly dimensions of loss – loss of home, of time, of people, of self – and probes the raw and uncertain trajectory of mourning along with the complex interplay of memory, faith and fate. The poems span continents, generations and cultures, exposing the collisions and contradictions of East and West which underlie her own personal narrative.

     SHAHILLA SHARIFF was born in Kenya and is Canadian. A fourth-generation East African, she spent her early childhood in a multi-generational Indian-Muslim household in Dar-es-Salaam. Her family later emigrated to Canada. She was educated at HarvardCollege,Harvard LawSchool and Cambridge University, where she was a Commonwealth Scholar. She has been a practising corporate lawyer for over twenty years. She has lived in Hong Kong since 1993.

    You can purchase this book by using the PayPal button below.

    • $
  • Moving House and Other Poems from Hong Kong by Gillian Bickley (UK and Hong Kong)

    

    "The fact of moving house sends Gillian Bickley back through the moves of a lifetime and forward to the last move, to the small room of the grave." -- Emeritus Professor I. F. Clarke and M. Clarke

    You can purchase this book by using the PayPal button below.

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  • Painting the Borrowed House: Poems by Kate Rogers (Canada and Hong Kong)

    

    Supported by Hong Kong Arts Development Council. Pbk.

    "Ostensibly a voyage through China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, it is really a journey through the emotions." -- Bill Purves

    You can purchase this book by using the PayPal button below.

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  • Perceptions by Gillian Bickley  (UK and HK)

    
    This fifth poetry collection recognises the need for shelter and survival, the desire for love, for achievement, for feelings of self-worth, for objects on which to bestow reciprocal affection and the search for high-order achievements beyond the self. Supported by Hong Kong Arts Development Council. Pbk w. audio CD.

    You can purchasethis book  by using the PayPal button below.

    • $
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  • refrain by Jason S Polley (Canada and HK)

    

    Narrative of travels in India as an inexperienced and sensitive young man. Pbk.

    "The reader is pulled into the text to experience the chaotic, disordered images of India". -- Kirby Wright.

    You can purchase this book by using the PayPal button below.
    

    • $
    • In stock
  • Rain on the Pacific Coast by Elbert Siu Ping Lee

    Supported by Hong Kong Arts Development Council

    Language: English

    Genre: Single Author Poetry Collection

    Pub date: 19 November 2013

      RAIN ON THE PACIFIC COAST is a tapestry of human experience, in which desires and passing worlds crisscross, collude, and collide. Each poem is a tiny spark that flies off in various types of encounter, giving significance and illumination to seemingly brief and mundane moments of daily existence. The poems are rooted in space and time and involve real people. Read in a certain way, they are mini life-dramas. Behind the scenes, the poet plays the roles of provocateur, critic, voyeur, seducer, lamenter, lover, and spiritual guide. Many of the poems were written in different places inHong Kong around the time of change over. Others were conceived at various locations fromEastern Canada to the Pearl River Delta.

     ELBERT LEE was raised in Hong Kong and has studied in Hong Kong, Canada and New Zealand. His poems have appeared in a number of magazines and e-journals, including Cha, Fusion, Muse Magazine, and Poetry Macao. He has also contributed poems to a number of anthologies, namely, Fifty/Fifty: A New Anthology of Hong Kong Writing and Hong Kong Poems: an English German Anthology. His reading interests range from cognitive science, evolutionary biology, to Taoism and Buddhism. A member of the adjunct faculty ofUpperIowaUniversity, he teaches psychology at the Hong Kong Campus. Elbert studied atMcGillUniversity, theUniversity ofHong Kong, and theUniversity ofAuckland, where he obtained his Ph.D. in Psychology. He is currently involved in designing teaching materials for students.

     "The community Lee writes to is very diverse – from the very local to the very universal …. Rain on the Pacific Coast is a rich culmination of his work over the years. … The collection as a whole takes us from one place to another, fromHong Kong to other places on thePacificCoast and back again." – Agnes S. L. Lam

     "In a city both burdened and enlightened by its past, life may be difficult, the air oppressive, and people awaiting a storm that brings an unpredictable outcome. But there can be an order in the ordinary, opening up paths to new vistas. Many poems in the volume appeal to a resilience in the natural world, in the human heart, in the common ways of people just walking around, observing, criticizing, sympathizing, so that we can seek solace in a wandering crowd, derive joy from poetry that sings of people and their habitus, and trust in forces that will bring sometimes sunshine, sometimes rain to the Pacific Coast." – Ching Yuet May

    You can purchase this book by using the PayPal button below.

    • $
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  • Shadow Play by James Norcliffe (NZ)

    Proverse Prize Finalist 2011. Poetry collection by well-known New Zealand writer. An audio-recording (on one CD) of the poet's own reading of all poems in the collection is included.

    The poems in SHADOW PLAY were written during the five year period since James Norcliffe's last collection, Villon in Millerton (Auckland University Press, 2007). Norcliffe professes himself not to be a confessional poet; nevertheless he freely acknowledges that places and people served as prompts for the poems. New Zealand based, Norcliffe is well-travelled and his poems have international resonance. Placing Shadow Play with one other poetry collection as a finalist for the annual international Proverse Prize in 2011, the judging panel (reviewing entries with no knowledge of the writers) found an expert hand behind a wide variety of well-wrought poems on a range of topics, pleasingly interwoven with literary allusions.

     New Zealand writer, JAMES NORCLIFFE, has had many years experience as a writer and editor. He has published a collection of short stories The Chinese Interpreter, six collections of poetry, most recently Rat Tickling, Along Blueskin Road, and Villon in Millerton; and several novels for young people. He has had a long-time involvement with Takahe magazine and has edited anthologies of poetry and of writing by young people. He is poetry editor for the Christchurch Press and teaches inLincolnUniversity's Foundation Studies Department. He has won a number of awards for both his poetry and his writing for young people. With Bernadette Hall he was presented with a Press Literary Liaisons Honour Award for lasting contribution to literature in theSouth Island,New Zealand. James has run many creative writing workshops and been awarded writing fellowships both inNew Zealand and overseas. He publishes poetry widely internationally and regularly reads at festivals and occasions throughoutNew Zealand and overseas. He has lived and worked for extended periods inAsia (China and Brunei Darussalem) but currently lives atChurchBay nearChristchurch, spending what little spare time he has with his family, listening to music and creating a garden.

    You can purchase this book by using the PayPal button below.

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  • Shadows in Deferment by Birgit Bunzel Linder

    Supported by Hong Kong Arts Development Council

    International Proverse Winner 2012

    Language: English

    Genre: Poetry

    Format: pbk. 220pp. (inc. illustrations)

    Pub. date: 19 November 2013

     A distinguished single-author poetry collection in free verse. The poet is serious in understanding people, relationships, languages, cultures, religions and the meaning of existence. She has lived inTaiwan, Mainland China, the USA and Germany as well as Hong Kong. Her work reflects these interests.

    The poems are lyrical and analytical, showing great skill in language. They refer to international and local events and personalities, ideas and philosophies. It is a rich collection. It cannot be read in one sitting but must be savoured over time, and more than once if justice is to be done to the ideas and the means by which they are expressed. Skilfull and attractive colour photographs by the author are included when new sections begin and add a valuable extra dimension to the work as a whole.

     "Birgit Linder's Shadows in Deferment conveys tremendous range in the service of a poetic intention which, across an impressive body of work, holds her reader fast." — Stuart Christie, Professor, Department of English Language and Literature, Hong Kong Baptist University.

     "Birgit Linder offers a collection of deeply engaged and engaging poems, labyrinthine paths to track and weave. Behind these poems: a bricoleur's appetite and passion for life. Behind the passion: there's no doubt, a determined, curious and luminous mind." — Mary-Jane Newton, author of Unlocking and Of Symbols Misused.

     "In The Longest Journey, E. M Forster writes of 'the union of shadow and adamant that men call poetry'. At her best, Linder is able to realize this impossible pairing, endowing the unbearable lightness of words with enduring diamond force." — Simon Patton, literary translator and poet.

     You can purchase this book by using the PayPal button below.

     

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  • Sightings: a collection of poetry with an essay, "Communicating Poems" by Gillian Bickley (UK and HK)

    "She has made use of everyday life situations and turned them into life lessons. Sightings inspires us to slow down and taste the sense of the city." -- Ma Kwai Hung. Supported by Hong Kong Arts Development Council. Pbk.

    You can purchase this book by using the PayPal button below.

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  • Smoked Pearl: Poems of Hong Kong and Beyond by Akin Jeje (Akinsola Olufemi Jeje) (Nigeria, Canada, UK, USA, HK)

    

    Observations and experiences in Hong Kong, Canada and Africa. Longlisted for the inaugural Proverse Prize. Supported by Hong Kong Arts Development Council. Pbk.

    You can purchase this book by using the PayPal button below.

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  • Of Symbols Misused by Mary-Jane Newton (Germany, Goa, India, HK)

    

    "Mary-Jane's first colleciton displays boldness of spirit and a buccaneering sense of adventure in its forays with language, matched by energy, a wry sense of humour and humility in the light of the poet's responsibilities." -- Peter Carpenter

    You can purchase  this book by using the PayPal button below.

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  • Wonder, Lust & Itchy Feet by Sally Dellow (UK, HK)

    A fearless, intelligent and eager woman -- mother, lover, wife and daughter -- collects for the first time a selection of poetry from her first four decades of living and writing. A Proverse Prize publication. Pbk.


    You can purchase this book by using the PayPal button below.

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THE INTERNATIONAL PROVERSE PRIZE for unpublished non-fiction, fiction and poetry provides an opportunity for single-author collections of poetry to be read, valued and published.

Two poetry collections were long-listed in 2009 and one became a finalist.

In 2010, again (by coincidence), two poetry collections were long-listed and one (an epic poem) became a finalist.

In 2011, again and again by coincidence, two poetry collections were among the finalists.

In 2012, three poetry collections were among the finalists and one became a winner.

In 2013, a poetry collection was among the finalists.

In 2014, an essay and poetry collection was recommended by the judges as a winner.

Some of these collections are available from this website and elsewhere for you to purchase.

 

We are interested in poetry from different countries and we have published poetry by writers from The Bahamas, Canada, Germany, Hong Kong, New Zealand, the UK and the USA.

POETS' CORNER

At a recent Creative Writing Workshop, we were shown three poems by a young poet.

Here they are for you to enjoy too.

To know more about Proverse, submitting a publishing proposal to Proverse, and/or entering for the international Proverse Prize for unpublished book-length non-fiction, fiction or poetry and/or the international Proverse Poetry Prize, browse the Proverse website: http://www.proversepublishing.com or take a look at the publishers' pages which are included in most Proverse books.

 

To be put on the free E-Newsletter list, email info[AT]proversepublishing.com, subject line "E-Newsletter subscription request". 

  

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