This year I’m a featured writer at IPNHK, and will travel to Kaiping and Heyuan for events as well as reading with the other poets here in Hong Kong.
Lingan is launching its MA program in Digital Literary Studies with a symposium on language, creativity and digital technologies. I’ll be there talking about Generative AI and Creative Writing.
The ELO is turning 25! I’ll present new immersive works at the conference in Toronto as part of the Artist Talks: Form and Structure panel.
I’m working on a scoping review paper about how Generative AI is impacting creative practitioners and industries. My co-investigators, Jack Tsao, Cindy Liang, and Alice Wong (all HKU) and I will present our work-in-progress at the symposium I’ve co-organized with Prof. Xuenan Cao: the Research Institute for the Humanities “Evaluating Generative AI Across Disciplines” Symposium. Join us for a day full of incisive talks from scholars in humanities, arts, computer science, and social science disciplines. Full program here.
I’ll conduct a workshop for EdUHK faculty on Generative AI tools and creativity in humanities and general education classrooms, sponsored by the university’s Center for Learning, Teaching and Technology.
I’m excited to share my recent research on Generative AI and pedagogy in an MLA Panel sponsored by LSL Language & Society Forum called “Issues of Agency with AI.” My paper is “Co-creating with Generative AI: Revising Notions of Originality and Authorship in the Classroom” and it expands on my research co-authored with Dr. Jack Tsao at HKU and published earlier this year in Poetics.
DOKYU is coming together live and in person for the first time since May 2023’s Learning from Aliens conference at NUS in Singapore! This time we’ll be in Japan from December 10-14, at two venues, co-hosted by Tokyo College (University of Tokyo), Waseda University, and MOCA Hishio Annex Gallery, Umaki, Shodoshima, Japan.
In addition to offering public talks, we’ll make new work together in an old shoyu-factory-turned art space. More info to come!
CUHK Shenzhen will host a 1-day installation of several new immersive poems in their black box theater, as part of the International Poetry Nights Hong Kong program. Details to come, but one feature will be a conversation about the future of literature in the age of GenAI, between me and Prof. Jussi Holopainen of City University of Hong Kong.
The Dream of a Common Language: Daniela Danz and Collier Nogues in conversation with Ting Guo
I’ll join German poet and librettist Daniela Danz in a conversation moderated by CUHK Cultural & Religious Studies Assistant Professor Ting Guo, as part of the International Poetry Nights Hong Kong 2024 program. Find out about other events here.
Institute of Chinese Studies, Lecture Theatre 1
Chinese University of Hong Kong
I’ll share recent research and creative work in a talk called “Feels Like Power: Militarized Spaces in Immersive Panoramic Poetry.”
I’ll present new immersive poetic work, alongside some research-driven context, in a paper called “BASE SPACE: Resisting U.S. Militarization in the Pacific with Immersive VR Poetry.”
I’m honored to represent CUHK at the Hong Kong University Grants Council’s 8-university webinar, “Real-world Applications of Generative AI in Learning, Teaching, and Assessment.” I’ll discuss “Student Approaches to Authorship and Originality: GenAI and the Future of the Humanities.”
I’ll discuss my recent research on GenAI in creative writing classrooms on a cross-disciplinary panel, “Evaluating GenAI: Perspectives Across Computer Science, Law, and Humanities,” jointly sponsored by the Department of Cultural Studies and the CUHK Library. T
The CUHK Department of English will host a symposium I’m co-organizing with Visiting Professor Dorothy Wang (Williams College) and Professor Elmo Gonzaga (CUHK Department of Cultural Studies). Confirmed poets include Don Mee Choi, Mary Jean Chan, Will Harris, Prageeta Sharma, Conchitina Cruz, Cyril Wong, Nicholas Wong, and Lawrence Lacambra Ypil. Our goal is to gather internationally renowned poets to discuss the cultural, literary, and linguistic impacts of Asian and Asian-diasporic poetry on global Anglophone literature. Each poet will offer a public workshop in addition to a public reading and panel discussion of their work. Find details here.
I’ll join poets Jennifer Wong, Tim Tim Cheng, and Nicholas Wong for a discussion about Hong Kong poetry and art in “Hong Kong, Art, and Poetry: Four Poets in Dialogue.” Thanks to Antony Huen for bringing us together.
In partnership with One City One Book Hong Kong, I’ll offer a public creative writing workshop for the 2023 Inter-Island Festival. Here’s the program description:
In this English-language poetry writing workshop, participants will be briefly introduced to the short story “Stone” in Bison, a book of ecological stories by the Hong Kong writer Ng Hui Bun recommended by One City One Book this year. Participants will then compose their own poems around natural objects like stones, shells, or leaves. While participants are encouraged to collect and bring their own objects to write about, a selection will also be provided. This workshop is family-friendly.
“Playing with English: Creative Writing in Hong Kong Secondary School Classrooms”
I’ve been invited to speak to a roomful of applied linguists about the creative writing workshops I lead as part of CUHK’s Masterclasses program, and my work with the Education Bureau of Hong Kong. I have many AEL colleagues, but we’ve never talked about how what we do is related, so I’m really looking forward to this. Here’s the abstract:
As Hong Kong educators and parents know, English is a core subject for everyone beginning in Primary One, and it's no longer official policy to rank schools in “bands.” But there’s a wide gap between the kinds of English instruction offered at legacy “Band One” schools on the one hand, and historically less elite schools on the other. Since 2016, I have worked with several local institutions, including the Hong Kong Education Bureau and Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, to build programs that bring creative and fun encounters with English language and literature to students (and their teachers) across a range of assessed English fluency levels. In this talk, I’ll discuss how “playing with English” can be a powerful tool to help students at every level become more confident, enthusiastic speakers and writers.
I’ve been working on a pedagogical research project with Dr. Jack Tsao, Associate Director of HKU’s Common Core, about how students think about authorship, creativity, and originality when they collaborate with GenAI tools. In a few weeks I get to share it with my colleagues at United College in a talk called “Beyond the Author: Generative AI and Student Co-creativity in Higher Education.”
I’ll join Professors Patrick Wong (Associate Vice President-Research), Xi Chao (Faculty of Law), and Darwin Lau (Faculty of Engineering) on a panel discussing the General Research Fund and Early Career Scheme grant process. My talk is the one called “Grantwriting for Poets!”
The Faculty of Arts has invited me to talk about my experience applying for (and receiving!) the Early Career Scheme research grant. My talk is called “Developing Successful Grant Proposals for Research-led Creative Practice.” I’m excited to share what I’ve learned about how to write grants for poetry research projects!
Lyn Baldwin and The Hazel Collective have put together a panel called “Reclaiming the Commons with Creative Collectives” for the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment conference this summer. I’ll talk about my work with my DOKYU collaborator YQ Chan, making video poems and immersive VR poems about the legacies of British and American imperialism in Singapore.
I’m collaborating with Jack Tsao, Associate Director of HKU’s Common Core, on a very fun project exploring how students can write creatively with AI text and image generators. There’s been a lot of discussion recently about how AI threatens conventional conceptions of originality and creativity, and we’re interested in approaching from a different direction: how can AI foster fruitful creative collaboration? We’re working with undergrads at both CUHK and HKU to write poems, fiction, and graphic novels collaboratively with GPT-3, DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion. I’m especially interested in learning how AI text generators can help clarify for students some key values of creative writing: freshness, depth, relevance, surprise, even duende. Our grant will also support publication of the students’ best work. We’ll present our initial findings at ICLT 2023 in a paper called “Artificial Intelligence Text and Image Generation for Student Co-creativity within Higher Education.”
In collaboration with DOKYU, I’ll present at the Asia Research Institute’s workshop, “Learning from Aliens: New Directions in Environmental Humanities Research and Practice.” The workshop aims to generate new insights and understandings about non-native species, the novel worlds they create, and the changes they set in motion. My paper is called “Thinking Invasively Together: Challenging the ‘Defense Ecosystem’ with Collaborative Creative Practice.”
I’ve put together a panel called “Creative Coding for Creative Writing: Digital Tools in the Poetry Classroom” with Lai-Tse Fan, Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, Doug Luman, and Keith S. Wilson. Come by if you’re in Seattle! Here’s the panel description:
Computational and digital poetry tools are increasingly accessible and easy to use, and offer exciting ways to help students compose new work, revise thoughtfully, and hone their sense of purpose as writers. This panel considers the merits of creative coding and other digital practices in poetry classrooms from MFA workshops to undergraduate surveys to high school enrichment programs. We’ll share our experiences using open-source, free, and fun tools to support specific pedagogical goals.
“Immersed in the Archive: VR Poetry as Cross-disciplinary Creative Practice”
It’s nice to be back to in-person events! I’ll visit the English Department’s Seminar Series to share some new immersive VR poems that have emerged from my collaborative work with DOKYU.
I’ll be visiting ART610: Duration, Audience, and Documentation, a graduate course taught by my DOKYU collaborator Aki Sasamoto. We’ll talk about document-based poetry and the challenges of presenting, in print format, poems that were designed for immersive 3D virtual space.
My panel is “Edge Effects and the Asian Archipelago,” with Elizabeth Ho (HKU), Jerrine Tan (City U of HK), and Elmo Gonzaga (CUHK). I’ll talk about my work with the DOKYU project, connecting scholars and artists based in Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and the Philippines.
Shirley Geok-lin Lim will launch her new collection of poems in collaboration with Cha. I’ll read a poem and so will many of Shirley’s friends. It’s online, 11AM in HK and 7PM in California. Facebook event info here!
I’ll visit Professor Otto Heim’s “Poetry Past and Present” class at HKU and offer the wrap-up lecture of the term, on contemporary poetic currents in and out of Hong Kong.
This spring, I’ll offer a pair of workshops on “Using Language Arts to Promote the Creative Use of English” to in-service teachers as part of the Education Bureau’s “Optimising Senior Secondary English Language Series.” Put more simply, we’ll talk about implementing creative writing strategies to help secondary students write in English with confidence, especially on their Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education English subject exam.
I’ll appear at the HKILF in several events this November. First up, I’ll be moderating a conversation with Bhanu Kapil, cosponsored by the University of Chicago and the University of Hong Kong School of English, on Tuesday 9 November at 8:30PM. Next I’ll join Michael O’Sullivan and Florence Ng in a panel Sunday 14 November at 11AM, where I’ll read from my essay “A Clock for Seeing” from the forthcoming Cart Noodles Press anthology Writing in Difficult Times. And finally, I’ll emcee the closing event at 7PM that same evening, where the winners of the Festival’s student poetry student contest will read alongside Mary Jean Chan, whose poem “Wish” inspired the contest this year.
For the University of Hong Kong Masters Programme in English Studies Reading Group, I’ll be discussing my favorite research topic with new MA students in a hybrid online/in-person event.