'Maybe because it's my second language, I don't assume it will love me back.

Having been a published poet for over a decade, Wong said he felt emboldened to experiment with language in a way that might feel obscure to Western readers. Wong, 43, who teaches at a local university, said he had witnessed Hong Kong's community of poets grow into something 'more substantial, less fragile'. In a recent poem, the speaker imagines inviting his father to his wedding held in Taiwan - the only jurisdiction in Asia where gay marriage is legal. Wong said his writing tapped into themes about 'everyday desire' in a way he found immediate and spontaneous. His latest collection was a finalist for the same Lambda Literary Awards' gay poetry prize this year. Other Hong Kong poets who have found success in tackling LGBTQ themes include Nicholas Wong, whose collection 'Crevasse' won one of the best-known prizes for queer literature worldwide in 2016. 'I was thinking about the parallels with oracy and colonialism, how it all ties back to submission.' 'The sexual element and the poem's queerness are absolutely essential,' Yip said. Yip's win caused a stir in Hong Kong media, though most newspapers were silent on the poem's description of a gay encounter - mirroring the mixed reactions of some local readers. Hong Kong poets who have found success in tackling LGBTQ themes include Nicholas Wong, whose collection 'Crevasse' won one of the best-known prizes for queer literature worldwide in 2016 Bertha WANG AFP If English is what will get me closer to that, then I'll keep using it.' Queer poetry in spotlightĪnglophone poets who spoke to AFP agreed their output was hardly mainstream, but said writing from the margins allowed them to challenge Hong Kong's norms. 'What matters to me is the emotional truth of writing. 'There's always a certain estrangement one feels when writing in a second language', Yip said, but English has now become his 'private language' in which words flow more naturally.

His award-winning 'Fricatives' begins with the narrator taking English lessons as a 'spectacled boy with a Hong Kong accent' and opens up to explore issues of language, race, sex and migration.Ī former British colony, Hong Kong has developed its own literary tradition in both Chinese and English, although anglophone poets remain a minority and receive little establishment support. 'Writing poems was a private rebellion against this regimented approach,' Yip told AFP. Now an economics undergraduate at Cambridge, Yip recalled the 'liberating' feeling of reading material that had nothing to do with high-school English classes taught according to a strict syllabus.

He beat more than 7,000 contenders from 100 countries and placed himself squarely among a cohort of Hong Kong poets writing in English that has found increasing recognition over the past decade. In March, at the age of 19, he became the youngest ever winner of the United Kingdom's National Poetry Competition.

Crevasse by Nicholas Wong