This week our editors bring you news of the effects of coronavirus on cultural events in Hong Kong, as well as news of the Romanian writers taking center stage at a Belgian arts festival, and new publications in Romania that address its troubled but intellectually rich past. Read on to find out more!
Charlie Ng, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Hong Kong
As China’s coronavirus pneumonia epidemic shows no signs of slowing down, Hong Kong is now under the threat of the wide-spreading virus and the possibility of a community outbreak of the disease. While the Hong Kong government refuses to take decisive measures to close the border to ban visitors from the Mainland even in face of a strike from the medical workers, many art and cultural events have been cancelled due to the temporary closure of venues managed by the Leisure and Cultural Services Department, including the programs at the Hong Kong Arts Festival and Art Basel.
Meanwhile, local poetry publication Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine is calling for submissions for its special issue on “Virus,” which is going to address the recent virus panic from a poetic perspective. The deadline for submission is March 15, 2020. The magazine accepts both Chinese and English works. Moreover, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal is going to host a session on “Poetic Women in Translation” to explore how female sensibility is reflected in poetry and its translation. The event will feature translator Jennifer Feeley, Hong Kong poet Ng Mei-kwan, and Cha’s founder and editor Tammy Ho.
Hong Kong Baptist University’s “Backreading Hong Kong: An Annual Symposium” is also calling for papers for its 2020 event under the theme of “Hong Kong and World Literature.” This year’s Symposium aims to encourage explorations on the relationships and intersections between Hong Kong and world literature, including the city’s representation, translation, and contestation in world literature, as well as its dialogue with it. The organizer will accept abstracts of 250 words until March 23, 2020.
MARGENTO, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Belgium, Romania, Moldova, and Canada
Romania has been the October 2019-January 2020 host of the biennial Belgian arts festival Europalia. Therefore, besides a Brancusi rock-concert-like exhibition that drew crowds and endless ticket lines rolling outside Bozar Galleries in Brussels, and a number of other relevant shows, a couple of literary events showcased contemporary writing and also featured a number of Romanian authors. The winner of the EU Prize for Literature, Ioana Pârvulescu, was alongside celebrated novelist Gabriela Adameșteanu, the widely translated Asymptote past contributor Mircea Cărtărescu, and fiction-writer-archeologist Cătălin Pavel on a panel titled “On the Power of Memory—Romanian Writers, 30 years after the Dictatorship,” looking back at the Romanian anti-communist revolution of 1989. Romania took center stage in venues and events elsewhere in Belgium too, as former “poète national” (Belgium poet laureate) Laurence Vielle involved the poetry of legendary surrealist Gherasim Luca (1913-1994) in her work as UCLouvain poet-in-residence. Luca was once described by Gilles Deleuze as “the greatest French poet, even though he was Romanian.” Gherasim Luca was also the subject of a Europalia performance by three leading Belgian comedians who drew on the poet’s work and presented at Musée L in Louvain-la-Neuve and at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels.
Back home as well as internationally, the fervent Romanian literary scene has witnessed a number of appearances that visited a politically troubled, but also intellectually rich past, as a beacon for explorations or exploits present and future. Literary critic and historian Dan Gulea authored a saga-like monograph on the history of the household name press Cartea Românească (Romanian Book) that recently passed its centennial anniversary milestone, while historian Mircea Stănescu released the second volume of a monumental record on “communist reeducation” torture enforcement in Soviet-occupied Romania. Abroad, past Asymptote contributors Diana Manole and Emilian Galaicu-Păun expanded their international reach with a hot-off-the press Canadian poetry collection and a Moldovan post-communist and Twitter-revolution novel in English translation.
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