The Department of English at the University of Macau (UM) is now welcoming guest writers and scholars on a regular basis. A faculty exchange programme established with George Washington University, in the U.S., will allow more authors to visit the city, the head of UM’s English department, John Corbett, explains to Macau CLOSER.
American-born poet Jennifer Chang, Assistant Professor in English and Creative Writing at George Washington University, was the first to visit UM, last week, giving a number of conferences and participating in different activities with students.
“This semester, we have a poet and scholar, David MacAleavey, until December,” John Corbett explains. “George Washington University has a strong Creative Writing element to its programme and so we hope to take advantage of that fact to boost Creative Writing in our own curriculum,” he adds.
Next semester, UM is going to welcome Professor Patricia Chu from January to June, considered by Corbett as “one of the key scholars of Asian American Literature”. The local university aims to host at least one guest author every semester from now on.
“We are in the process of refocusing part of our MA programme so that students get the chance to meet, interview and study the work of contemporary writers in English,” Corbett says.
UM’s head of the English Department wants these activities to focus on specific themes and concerns. The Department is interested in “writers who engage with Asian American identity, or writers who reflect on the experience of the Holocaust in Europe.” Collaborating with other local and foreign institutions is also part of the English Department’s on-going plan.
“We are already collaborating with events like The Script Road – Macau Literary Festival in mounting joint events,” notes Corbett. “The MA students are involved in interviewing the visiting writers, transcribing the recordings and establishing a searchable database that will be streamed online for scholars, teachers and students.”
In the next couple of months, UM expects to welcome experimental poets from Europe and Taiwan – Peter McCarey, Chris McCabe and Li Chen – who mix visual and digital elements in their poetry in English and Chinese. John Corbett also hopes that the local university can host a series of activities “with Asian-Pacific based writers and translators in November”.
“I just love to play with words”
Poet Jennifer Chang, Assistant Professor in English and Creative Writing at George Washington University, was the first scholar from that institution to visit the University of Macau under a new protocol signed between the two parties.
“I just knew that there was a new relationship between our universities, so I wanted to figure out what can be reached. I was curious about what it is like out here,” says the America-born author with a Chinese family background. “I have never been to Hong Kong or Macau. I’ve been to Taiwan, but not to [People’s Republic of] China. I was very eager to come and to find out what it would be like”, she continues.
Chang, a poet mainly focused on modernism, is the author of books such as Some Say the Lark and The History of Anonymity. She grew up surrounded by books, mainly in English.
“We went to the public library a lot, Chinese was just what we spoke. When I started pre-school at age four, I was very shocked and very confused, because I always spoke Chinese at home,” she recalls.
Language has been Jennifer Chang’s passion since a young age.
“My grandfather was a Philosophy professor; he had lots of poetry and different books that I was very curious about. I didn’t realize they were poems, but they were about things like trees, the wind speaking to the trees… So I saw poems, read them, and loved them before I knew what they were.
“I think children have an intuitive sense of poetry. I just love to play with language, it is so interesting, and it feels incredible to find the word that corresponds with something you see or something you’re doing.”
Chang is now in the “early stages” of research for a book about her great-great-grandfather and his role during the Opium War period in Hong Kong. In the meantime, she keeps nurturing her love for poetry and for authors such as Emily Dickinson and Yeats.
“I’m more familiar with American, British, or Irish poetry. I’ve had a very Westernized education. I don’t know a lot about poetry from other countries. I read Contemporary Chinese poets, I like Bei Dao,” she says.
And being a fan of Modernism, Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa is also amongst her favourites.
