A Compass for Sinophone Poetry. Hong Kong Literary Journals and Community across Translingualism

Is contemporary Sinophone poetry heading south? Can Hong Kong serve as a compass—a 指南針, that is—of Sinophone poetry in its global network? In an attempt to answer these questions, this contribution focuses on three literary journals mainly based in Hong Kong—Pangolin House, 聲韻詩刊/Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine, and Cha: An Asian Literary Journal—that epitomize the effort of (re)orienting and disseminating Sinophone poetry in translation, hence turning the island into a pivot of the global network. By giving vent to a vast array of places of production, ideological spaces, and linguistic identities across translingualism, these bilingual journals stand as prominent gravitational forces, steering a “southern discourse,” or better, a “lyrical dialogue from the south,” around the multifarious lyrical shapes of Sinophone poetry, going beyond languages and localisms. These journals recognize Hong Kong as a polyphonic hub for the creation, fruition, and exchange of poetry, as well as an essential constituent to a nexus of dialectic relationships in the Sinophone area and beyond. Moreover, without forsaking Hong Kong’s identity, they help define Sinophone poetry as a fundamentally multilingual space, as they show that its roots are also its routes.