This book contains an introduction centred on migration, exile, -the other-, and the experience of multicultural communities in the modern world, followed by three sections of original poetry. In Part I, poems deal with Britain, Canada, and China (mainly Hong Kong). In Part II the focus shifts to Australia and then Europe again (mainly France). Part III, entitled -Shards- presents fragmentary lyric voices suggesting the processes of cultural fragmentation and change. In each part the poems connect with individual experience, historical events such as the French, Russian and Chinese...

This book is a follow-up to the author s previous Peter Lang book, The Rendez-Vous: Poems of Multicultural Experience (2003). The new book contains recent poetry and prose by Andrew Parkin, together with the prefaces to two new longer poems. The Gourds is based on a collection of small Chinese gourds etched to depict scenes from literature and legend. Star of a Hundred Years is a dramatic ode dedicated to the father of Hong Kong cinema, Sir Run Run Shaw, who is more than one hundred years old and whose lifetime coincides with the history of film. The ode is thus cast in...