Cha

Category: t

  • Stuff white people like

    This post was originally written on 15th October, 2009. Have you heard of Stuff White People Like? There’s a feature article about it today in The Guardian.  It is not difficult to guess what the blog/book Stuff White People Like…

  • Difficult language — some thoughts

    This post was originally written on 15th April, 2009. Judith Butler Judith Butler‘s prose style has often been criticised as ‘hard’ and unnecessarily perplexing. To some frustrated scholars, her thoughts must be very muddled and therefore can only be translated into…

  • How honest are you in your diary?

    This post was originally written on 18th April, 2009. Today, the webmaster told me a story from Greg Egan‘s Axiomatic. The story, “The Hundred Light-Year Diary”, is about a future invention that allows people to send messages to themselves from…

  • Quote of the day — Amitav Ghosh

    “One thing we should be aware of: in this age of globalisation, there’s this idea that English is becoming more and more expansive. In fact, much the opposite is happening: in the 19th century, English was much wider, more accepting…

    Quote of the day — Amitav Ghosh

  • 𝑇ℎ𝑒 đș𝑟𝑎𝑣𝑒𝑩𝑎𝑟𝑑 đ”đ‘œđ‘œđ‘˜

    Written by Tammy Lai-Ming Ho, this post was originally published on 5 April 2010. . In his Acknowledgements, Neil Gaiman cites Kipling’s The Jungle Book as an influence of his The Graveyard Book (note the similarity between Kipling’s and Gaiman’s…

  • Empires of the Word

    Nicholas Ostler has a new book out: The Last Lingua Franca: English Until the Return of Babel (2010). In it, he argues that English, today’s global lingua franca, will die out, following the pattern of former great languages Sanskrit and Latin. He…

  • Matisse

    This post was originally written on 11th May, 2010. BBC is currently running a series called “Modern Masters”, presented and narrated by the enthusiastic art journalist Alastair Sooke. The first episode was on Andy Warhol, whose life story, repeated so…

  • ‘Typewriter’

    This post was originally written on 24th March, 2010. This morning, when reading Leonard Wolf’s The Essential Dracula, I learnt a bit more about the universal typing system (the subject of ‘typing’ is brought up as you may know, Mina…

  • Dendrochronology

    Cover art by Shida Cao My short poem “Dendrochronology” is now published in the latest issue (Fall 2010) of Willows Wept Review. The poem was written after a visit to the exhibition “Closer Examinations: Fakes, Mistakes and Discoveries” earlier this year. As the…

  • Fairytales teach us to be bad?

    This post was originally written on 4th December, 2009. Illustration by Rui Tenreiro Do you know the fairytales “Rumpelsiltskin” and “Clever Gretchen”? They have one thing in common: they teach us to be nasty, cunning and dishonest, if they teach.…

  • The demise of small online publications

    This post was originally written on 7th July, 2009. Part of this post is quoted in the article “Persistent Identifiers: the ‘URN Granular’ Project of the German National Library and the University and State Library Halle” [PDF] My poem “Covers and Spines” was…

  • The real reader should be curious

    This post was originally written on 20th May, 2010 Lorrie Moore Today, Paris Review tweeted a quote by the short-story writer Lorrie Moore: “If one loves stories, then one would naturally love the story of the story.” I agree with…

  • Racism, of course, but what else is going on?

    This post was originally written on 1st September 2010. Reading the Atlantic today, I came across the controversy about Dior’s latest advertising campaign — “Shanghai Dreamers”. Produced by the Chinese artist Quentin Shih, the images show striking white women amidst…

  • Genuine email correspondence

    Pictured: Wheatfield with Crows by Vincent Van Gogh Dear ________,We are very sorry to inform you that we cannot publish your poem “_______” in Cha, after all; we found out that it was previously featured in ______. In our acceptance email,…

  • Quote of the day—”I love you madly”

    This post was originally written on 2nd June, 2010. “I think of the postmodern attitude as that of a man who loves a very cultivated woman and who knows that he cannot say to her, “I love you madly”, because…

  • "Small and incestuous"

    This post was originally written on 20th January, 2010. – In her blog post “Critique, Cruelty”, Anindita Sengupta comments on the situation of Indian English poetry: [T]he world of Indian English poetry is so small and incestuous. Nobody wants to…

  • Eddie Tay’s The Mental Life of Cities

    This post was originally posted on 22nd October, 2010.  click image to enlarge We are very pleased and proud to announce that our Reviews Editor Eddie Tay, who is also a professor teaching creative writing and poetry at the Chinese…

  • > Language > Place

    Dorothee Lang, editor of Blue Print Review, invited me to participate in a new blog carnival themed “>Language >Place”. Below is my participating post. You can learn more about the project here. You are encouraged to join the carnival. UPDATE:…

  • Weekend in Paris

    The poem “Weekend in Paris (in four parts)” was written in November 2008, shortly after my birthday. These postcards were first published in Postal Poetry in February 2009. (See here, here, here, and here.) –

  • Envious Old Woman

    “Envious Old Woman” is a stanza from “Confessions of a Woman, Seventy Years Old or Less” (published in Softblow). This postcard was published in Postal Poetry on 19 September, 2008. (See here.) –

  • The Social Network

    We greatly enjoyed The Social Network and recommend that you read Jonathan Mendelsohn’s review of the film in two parts: Part I and Part II. – – Read Jonathan Mendelsohn’s Cha profile. – –

  • ‘What is African [Asian] Literature?’

    Ngugi wa Thiong’O, Decolonizing the Mind, p.6: Was it literature about Africa [Asia] or about the African [Asian] experience? Was it literature written by Africans [Asians]? What about a non-African [non-Asian] who wrote about Africa [Asia]: did his work qualify…

  • A WORLD ANTHOLOGY OF POETRY AND PROSE

    Writers anywhere in the world born in the generation 1940 – 1960 are encouraged to submit their work to A World Anthology of Poetry and Prose. This notice goes out specifically to Chinese or persons of part Chinese ancestry whose…

  • Rediscovered: two past articles on Cha co-editor

    In 34th Parallel: In Ching Yin:(click the images to enlarge) Both articles were published in 2009. – –

  • CHA is in The Hindu

    Today, Cha is in The Hindu, one of the most widely-read English newspapers in India: Tammy Ho Lai-Ming, co-editor of Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, says that the readership of online journals has grown considerably since … ( Read the…

  • On Signs — What do you know about clocks?

    “Pray, my dear, quoth my mother, have you not forgot to wind up the clock?” Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tistram Shandy, Gentleman, Volume I, Chapter I Random musings The cover image of the September 2010 issue of…

  • Proud exhibition

    In May 2008, Florence Bamberger, a then second-year illustration student from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London, contacted me and said she would like to illustrate some of my poems for her final-year project. In the…

  • Sweet Heart

  • A handful of stone

    My little poem about waiting for the train at the Charing Cross Station one afternoon in March is published on the lovely A Handful of Stones today (Tuesday 4th May, 2010). According to editor Fiona Robyn, ‘a small stone is…

  • Tiziano Fratus’s translation in Ludwig

    – –– – May 2010Ludwig 4Cahier internazionale di PoesiaIn questo numero poesie di:– Mariela Griffor (Cile/USA), traduzione di Eliana D. Langiu– Tammy Ho Lai-Ming (Hong Kong), traduzione di Tiziano Fratus – Arthur Bidegain (Francia), traduzione di Michela Orio– Robin Czarniack…