Fly Heads and Bird Claws

Arguably the most well-known and highly awarded of Hong Kong authors over the last thirty years, Leung Ping-kwan has published fifteen volumes of poetry. Leung also writes fiction and has published a novel and four collections of stories. He currently teaches literature and film studies at Lingnan University, frequently collaborates with visual and performing artists, and has held several poetry and photography exhibitions that feature his own work.

Leung is the consummate tour guide, able to direct readers from kitchen tables through urban and interior landscapes that are mottled with Cantonese, Mandarin, numerous Englishes, and a cascade of other cultures. This ability to create in a hybrid space without sounding forced or inauthentic has evolved throughout his writing career that began in the late 1960s, through PhD work in comparative literature at the University of California, San Diego, in the 1980s, and then back to Hong Kong for a long career of intertwining writing and teaching at several universities.

The poetry book is complemented by conceptual images by artist Gukzik Lau.