Tag: poem

Eric Yip’s Fricatives Wins UK National Poetry Competition

Hong Kong’s Eric Yip has won the UK’s National Poetry Competition with his poem Fricatives which talks about language, race, migration, belonging and the guilt of leaving one’s home behind.

Fricatives’ is a poem that makes its way ‘through the murky and treacherous waters of language, race, migration, and of being heard when “Nobody wants to listen/ to a spectacled boy with a Hong Kong accent.”

Speaking of his win the 19-year-old Yip said “It’s possibly the most surprising thing to ever happen to me. I’ve never had anything published before in a journal, let alone win any competition. I’m also honoured to contribute a small part to the growing literary space of Hong Kong poetry, which was carved out piece by piece through the wondrous efforts of many Hong Kong poets I admire.”

“I see the poem as a coming-of-age for the speaker, reflected through the transformation of his city.  It’s about different types of oppression and how the speaker navigates them. The poem begins by looking at the legacy of colonialism in influencing how we speak, or how we think we should speak. Then there’s the political dimension, which feels impossible not to write about. There’s also submission in the sexual sense, but even that scene has colonial undertones. And finally, there’s assimilating into an English-speaking country. All this mirrors Hong Kong’s journey from a colony to a battleground, to a site of exodus,” Yip added.

“I think there’s definitely an element of survivor guilt in the poem. Hong Kong is experiencing its largest emigration wave in history, but not everyone has the means to move to another country. For me, being able to write this poem is a form of privilege”

Yip’s work was chosen by judges Fiona Benson, David Constantine and Rachel Long, who read all the entries anonymously.

Benson said: “Fricatives is an immensely ambitious and beautifully achieved poem. It puts its reader into the position of a student of English as a second language, the fricative consonants tangling our mouths as we speak the poem, and intriguing us with the alternate meanings that rest precariously on the pronunciation. ‘Proper’ achievements – the correct pronunciation, the good education abroad, and the proud parents – are countered by an underworld of political prisoners and risky, grim sex.”

She added: “This is an incredibly powerful, vulnerable story of an uneasy assimilation, and of government surveillance… It’s a poem of poise and counterpoise, and is personal, political and acutely musical. What a tensile, high-wire reckoning.”

Fricatives by Eric Yip

To speak English properly, Mrs Lee said, you must learn
the difference between three and free. Three men
escaped from Alcatraz in a rubber raft and drowned
on their way to Angel Island. Hear the difference? Try
this: you fought your way into existence. Better. Look
at this picture. Fresh yellow grains beaten
till their seeds spill. That’s threshing. That’s
submission. You must learn to submit
before you can learn. You must be given
a voice before you can speak. Nobody wants to listen
to a spectacled boy with a Hong Kong accent.
You will have to leave this city, these dark furrows
stuffed full with ancestral bones. Know
that death is thorough. You will speak of bruised bodies
skinnier than yours, force the pen past batons
and blood, call it fresh material for writing. Now
they’re paying attention. You’re lucky enough
to care about how the tongue moves, the seven types
of fricatives, the articulatory function of teeth
sans survival. You will receive a good education
abroad and make your parents proud. You will take
a stranger’s cock in your mouth in the piss-slick stall
of that dingy Cantonese restaurant you love and taste
where you came from, what you were made of all along.
Put some work into it, he growls. C’mon, give me
some bite. Your mother visits one October, tells you
how everyone speaks differently here, more proper.
You smile, nod, bring her to your favourite restaurant,
order dim sum in English. They’re releasing
the students arrested five years ago. Just a tad more
soy sauce please, thank you. The television replays
yesterday on repeat. The teapots are refilled. You spoon
served rice into your mouth, this perfect rice.
Steamed, perfect, white.

Image: National Poetry Competition

Amanda Gorman New Poem – A New Day’s Lyric

Poet Amanda Gorman has Instagrammed a video of herself reciting her new poem inside an empty theatre. Gorman said “I wrote A New Day’s Lyric both to celebrate the new year & honour both the hurt & the humanity of the last one.”

Ahead of the poem’s release, Gorman is quoted in a Vanity Fair interview that A New Day’s Lyric was partly inspired by the stories of grief and perseverance she’s seen shared on social media.

Earlier in December, Gorman published the poetry collection Call Us What We Carry.

May this be the day
We come together.
Mourning, we come to mend,
Withered, we come to weather,
Torn, we come to tend,
Battered, we come to better.
Tethered by this year of yearning,
We are learning
That though we weren’t ready for this,
We have been readied by it.
We steadily vow that no matter
How we are weighed down,
We must always pave a way forward.

This hope is our door, our portal.
Even if we never get back to normal,
Someday we can venture beyond it,
To leave the known and take the first steps.
So let us not return to what was normal,
But reach toward what is next.

What was cursed, we will cure.
What was plagued, we will prove pure.
Where we tend to argue, we will try to agree,
Those fortunes we forswore, now the future we foresee,
Where we weren’t aware, we’re now awake;
Those moments we missed
Are now these moments we make,
The moments we meet,
And our hearts, once all together beaten,
Now all together beat.

Come, look up with kindness yet,
For even solace can be sourced from sorrow.
We remember, not just for the sake of yesterday,
But to take on tomorrow.

We heed this old spirit,
In a new day’s lyric,
In our hearts, we hear it:
For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne.
Be bold, sang Time this year,
Be bold, sang Time,
For when you honor yesterday,
Tomorrow ye will find.
Know what we’ve fought
Need not be forgot nor for none.
It defines us, binds us as one,
Come over, join this day just begun.
For wherever we come together,
We will forever overcome.

The Hill We Climb – Amanda Gordon

Brilliant! The undoubted highlight of Biden’s presidential inauguration ceremony was the 6-minute recital of The Hill We Climb by Amanda Gormon. Listen to it, read it…

https://youtu.be/2mTmTdOgv0M

The Hill We Climb

When day comes we ask ourselves,
where can we find light in this never-ending shade?
The loss we carry,
a sea we must wade
We’ve braved the belly of the beast
We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace
And the norms and notions
of what just is
Isn’t always just-ice
And yet the dawn is ours
before we knew it
Somehow we do it
Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed
a nation that isn’t broken
but simply unfinished.

We the successors of a country and a time
Where a skinny Black girl
descended from slaves and raised by a single mother
can dream of becoming president
only to find herself reciting for one
And yes we are far from polished
far from pristine
but that doesn’t mean we are
striving to form a union that is perfect
We are striving to forge a union with purpose
To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and
conditions of man.

And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us
but what stands before us
We close the divide because we know, to put our future first,
we must first put our differences aside
We lay down our arms
so we can reach out our arms
to one another
We seek harm to none and harmony for all.

Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true:
That even as we grieved, we grew
That even as we hurt, we hoped
That even as we tired, we tried
That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious
Not because we will never again know defeat
but because we will never again sow division.

Scripture tells us to envision
that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree
And no one shall make them afraid
If we’re to live up to our own time
Then victory won’t lie in the blade
But in all the bridges we’ve made.

That is the promise to glade
The hill we climb
If only we dare
It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit,
it’s the past we step into
and how we repair it
We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation
rather than share it
Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy
And this effort very nearly succeeded
But while democracy can be periodically delayed
it can never be permanently defeated.

In this truth
in this faith we trust
For while we have our eyes on the future
history has its eyes on us
This is the era of just redemption
We feared at its inception
We did not feel prepared to be the heirs
of such a terrifying hour
but within it we found the power
to author a new chapter
To offer hope and laughter to ourselves
So while once we asked,
how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe?
Now we assert
How could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?

We will not march back to what was
but move to what shall be
A country that is bruised but whole,
benevolent but bold,
fierce and free
We will not be turned around
or interrupted by intimidation
because we know our inaction and inertia
will be the inheritance of the next generation
Our blunders become their burdens
But one thing is certain:
If we merge mercy with might,
and might with right,
then love becomes our legacy
and change our children’s birthright.

So let us leave behind a country
better than the one we were left with
Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest,
we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one
We will rise from the gold-limbed hills of the west,
we will rise from the windswept northeast
where our forefathers first realized revolution
We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the midwestern states,
we will rise from the sunbaked south
We will rebuild, reconcile and recover
and every known nook of our nation and
every corner called our country,
our people diverse and beautiful will emerge,
battered and beautiful
When day comes we step out of the shade,
aflame and unafraid
The new dawn blooms as we free it
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it
If only we’re brave enough to be it.

Read more of Amanda Gorman poems at theamandagorman.com.

Vishal Nanda: Writer, Game Designer and Peel Street Poet

vishalnanda_0061

Vishal Nanda is a writer and spoken word performer, as well as an indie game designer, teacher, and editor. He spends his time writing poetry, scripts, screen plays, plays, short stories, novels and the like, as he cannot quite help himself.

Recently, he hosted an event with acclaimed novelist Omar Musa during Hong Kong’s Literary Festival and his poetry has been published in the literary journal Asia Cha. He has performed spoken word poetry at a variety of events, including TEDx Wanchai, comedy shows, fundraisers and on RTHK Radio Three. He can usually be found nervously performing In Lan Kwai Fong most Wednesdays at Orange Peel with the other Peel Street Poets.

How long have you been involved in poetry?
I’ve been writing sort of poetry since I was thirteen, if you could call what I used to write ‘poetry’. It would be more accurate to say that I was trying to write poetry. I am hesitant to call what I write poetry, or to call myself a poet.

It’s quite a grandiose declaration because for good or ill ‘poetry’ still has pretentious connotations. If we had another word for it in English, with the sense that you’re part of a rather large group of aspiring writers maybe in training, that could excise the pretence from the term, like writing ‘pooms’, then that would be more accurate.

Writing pooms was a solo thing for a long time, completely devoid of connection to a larger community, till I ‘joined’ Peel Street. Since then I’ve been writing far more than I have in the past, with far more opportunities to get read or listened to, so in terms of dedicating more time to poetry, I would have to say since joining Peel, which was about three years ago. Since then I’ve been lucky to have more opportunities to write and perform, and it all started with Peel.

https://youtu.be/8gFIEv7F0lA

Where do you get the inspiration for your writing?
This is a crazy question. It would be hard enough to answer if you were referring to one specific piece I’ve written, let alone for writing as a whole. What was I thinking at the time? What series of events throughout my entire life, my childhood, all the media I have ever consumed, led to me producing that piece of work? How did I have the time to do it? What was I feeling back when I wrote it?

There’s a way to bypass the question entirely, and the assumption behind it, of the creator having agency in the cause. People are computers who take input, all the input our gloriously unique minds are capable of taking as the most powerful processing machines in the known universe, and then output something, like dick in the box, or Game of Thrones, or poetry. Although we have agency in the process we are far from objective observers of that process.

That said, if I had to give a tidier answer then I would abide by something Neil Gaiman said, which I paraphrase as ‘You walk by a dozen stories everyday. A writer notices at least five of them.’ In other words, there are stories and ideas everywhere, and it’s a matter of observation both internally and externally to recognise them.

And although I’m saying there is a lack of agency I don’t think there is a lack of craft. I use Evernote for everything, which means I can write on my phone, my Ipad, my desktop, whatever, it all goes to the same place, and if I have an idea I write it down, I file it away, whether I’m walking or sitting at home. I think there are two extremes for me when it comes to how I end up writing something, with a lot in the middle. I want to emphasise that I’m an amateur.

On the grandscale of global writers I’m just another guy on the cliff hoping to make his way up, but I think there’s some value then in telling you my work ethic, of the method in attempting to climb the cliff because it’s probably similar to a lot of other people who are trying but haven’t quite made it. I write all my ideas down. Sometimes I’ll have an abstract idea that I need to craft into a story- I had one about how children and what might be considered ‘the delusional’ have a lot in common, but how do I contain that in an actual narrative?

So I try to build something, which sometimes takes time, it takes outlines and planning and experimentation and editing. Or I had one about a guy who was ‘time displaced’ and could feel the past of any place he was at and I run with the idea, I imagine being that character and I take the story to it’s logical conclusions.

I don’t believe in writer’s block, my rule is that if I can’t figure out a problem, I’m only allowed to quit if I’ve sat in front of a desk and stared at the page for half an hour to an hour and truly come up with nothing, which I honestly think is a rarity. I try to abide by that rule.

On the other hand, especially with poetry, I’ve found that moments where I’m really emotional, often negatively, at those times writing out a poem is therapy, an itch, I have to get it out there because I feel like I’m going crazy, it’s like taking the chaos of an unformed internal monologue and shaping it into something, and times like those are times where it just flows out in one go.

So it’s both extremes, but I believe in the end it’s consistent work and the determination to see an idea to it’s end, no matter how crap the product, with the faith that it’s still practice and it still counts.

How does Hong Kong influence your writing?
It upsets me. It’s not exactly an ideal place, though it is idolised when it comes to safety, or the MTR or cheap, delicious food. I think a lot of writing, especially in English, when it comes to Hong Kong, attempts to focus on defining the place with the awareness that it’s unique. So that enough readers not familiar with it will find it compelling, it’s like travel writing.

I don’t want to write like that. I think there is a lot of isolation, a lot of unhealthy relationships, toxicity and loneliness here and I think that this is far from limited to this city.

I try to find the universal in the specific, rather than denying what is universal by focusing on the specific. Hong Kong, in the context of us as a species, is a remarkable trailer of a future to come. It has one of the largest income gaps in the world, a disgusting amount of people living in poverty juxtaposed with stratospheric decadence, rampant pollution and corporate-timescale-level-thinking (that is, in quarters, which is somewhat problematic when it comes to climate change), the highest average IQ and life expectancy in the world, cutting edge technology harnessed to make you buy shit you do not need, and a disturbingly high suicide rate among children who don’t fit the requisite mould.

I grew up here and frankly it makes me angry. I also love it, it is my home, and I’ve written celebratory pieces about it too. This is too big of a question to answer; how does Hong Kong influence my writing? If I have to sum it up, I’d say as a living computer I am forced to process it in all it’s neon madness, and that I’d hate to write about fields full of sheep instead.

The amount of silence in such a noisy place is mind boggling. So few people have an actual voice, instead we are bombarded with manicured ads and artificial TV shows claiming to define our existence in Hong Kong. Everywhere you look in Hong Kong, on the walls, on buildings, on magazine covers everywhere, there are words telling you how to be or think, via telling you what to buy, or what is considered of value and this gets to people, this affects us.

In Hong Kong, I try to consider what isn’t being said, but from my very, very narrow perspective. There’s a hell of a lot of noise here. I think a lot of writing at the moment is focused on articulating a perspective that can then be cozily placed in a category like ‘culture’ or ‘gender’ or some space from which the consumer and creator can feel comfortable in being associated with.

What is lost in that movement is the attempt to discover the universal, or even admitting that the state of us as a globalised species, like our genes, is 99.5% similar and cultural fetishisation for the sake of it is a form of self-inflicted blindness.

Hong Kong as an influence, is a noisy place, which inspires me by refusing to keep things simple or quiet, even if most people are rendered silent by it. Mental health is a box I’d like to say I try to fit a lot of my writing into- the state of Hong Kong’s popular perception, treatment and education when it comes to mental health is an absolute disgrace.

Google the government website on mental health, there’s a questionnaire for depression and if you succeed, if you have symptoms that fulfil the requirements for a diagnoses, the website effectively tells you to ‘take it easy’. There’s barely any help. It’s an absolute disgrace, and it’s not the rich that are being let down, they can afford private treatment, it’s the larger majority that have to count on a government doctor with ten minutes every two weeks to see you and the popular stigma that you can’t talk about these things.

The social environment is, in many ways, psychologically toxic. That said I have it easy compared to most people, I’m aware of that, I try to stay aware of my privilege. But the BS is dripping from the walls.

Poem:

Things I wish were or that I could see in the city but don’t because the world is not moulded by the whims of my imagination.

Like when I stop,
Like when I pause, to give a beggar change,
Another hard-eyed walker strides towards us,
He’s from this mangled person’s mysterious past.
He’s got a deformed limb,
He’s engaging in disabled kung fu,
Flipping around on one functional leg,
And beating the shit out of this guy wearing a suit.

Is that as offensive as ignoring him?

At least in my fantasies I pretend to care.

Behind an office lady’s perfume trail,
I surf a happy wake- wish it was colored,
Maybe purple, so I can
Hmmm
Sniff the smell of happy.
It’s not stalking, going in the same direction,
It’s not like there’s any space on the escalator.
See the perfectly looking douchey guy in the suit,
See the way too sultry blouse wearing office girl,
See them engage in Mortal Kombat.

A look passes between them,
Sudden recognition,
Eyes flare
An accusatory YOUUU
One person kicks / the streets clear,
To form an orderly circle.
They pose,
I become one of those dudes in the backdrop,
Moving my hands up and down,
Like in the Super Street fighter backgrounds.

Outside the Landmark,
Fenced-in trees inhale car fumes,
Like hardened smokers talking shit to one another,
About how dumb humans are.
You know the waterfront used to be right by my roots.
Yeah thank the Sun they covered that stuff with concrete. Smelled horrific.

Sometimes on a skyway,
When a double decker passes so close,
I think of jumping, and rolling, then running on the roofs,

But I’d need something to escape from for it to make sense.
Like reality.
Or something to chase.
Like office ladys.

How about the neon signs,
Unravelling to become neon snakes,
They float through the sky like Doctor Who monsters,
Neon eels,
If they touch you, they either electrocute, or seduce,

And next thing you know you’re in a Wanchai strip club being choked to death
By the fairy lights.

I want a class one Tai Tai laden down with shopping bags,
Wearing Armani everything and sunglass occluded eyes,
To walk into HSBC,
Chill as fuck,
And from her shopping bags drop,
Two tommy guns.
With perfect diction, her lines would be:
Everyone be cool this is a robbery.
Any of you pricks move and I’ll execute every last mother fucking one of you.
In my fantasies I don’t bother not to plagiarise,
This is why copyright is unnatural,
Her lipstick is as red as the HSBC logo,
Or the dead kids those terrorists they accidentally funded killed.

Oops, too far, good thing none of this is real.

The Victoria Harbour channel monster would be unfathomable.
Doubly terrifying because of the layers of nasty that film the water,
Would make it invisible till it was a few feet from the surface,
Armoured in plastic bags, translucent scales that warp the image underneath,
Lovecrafted out of Vita Box cartons that inflate and deflate as it breathes,
It’s touch is asthma,
It’s straw appendages piercing skin to suck out all your dreams,
Right through your pupils,
You won’t be able to get a good night’s sleep again,
It will find you in every toilet bowl and stagnant puddle,
The urban mosquitos are it’s eyes.

Skyscrapers are secret spaceships,
Rocket boosters buried in the concrete,
Waiting for the signal,
They lift up all at once,
Hidden steel shutters locking down windows,
For the inevitable space exodus.

Inevitable, in my fantasies at least.

Maybe they are missiles,
Anti-alien weapons,
Filled with angry bankers coked up like Viking berserkers, unable to distinguish friend,
From the ignorant average person investing with them,
They take their ties off, tying to them stationary,
Wielding silken nunchucks against the bugger ships they board,
The antennas and weird spiral shit on roofs were always
Disguised ramming prows.

If all the cars, lorrys and bus’s horned at once,
Would the sound blow out all the buildings glass?
If the PLA in admiralty took on the cops,
Would the triads decide a tie breaker?
I want a crazy brown guy to walk into a crystal shop,
With a tennis racket,
And systematically smash everything at once,
Then maybe buy it all afterwards,

Take that mainland billionaires.

I’m a fucked up patriot in my head.

I want to see ten thousand people take to the streets,
Yelling slogans from the 1970s,
I want to sit cross legged in the middle of the highway
While the Hong Kong police go full police state
And radical students are threatened with pepper spray,
Would be cool to feel a part of history,
Especially to be on the losing side.

I want graffiti on the government buildings,
And street art outside the IFC,
I want a declaration that anyone can be Batman,
Hanging from a skyway.
I want to see it again,
And pretend that a seven million strong city,
Educated and liberal,
Could field one hell of an army
For change.
For a change,
I want my fantasies to be real,

Also
I don’t think theres anything wrong with having an office girl fetish,
I mean I grew up in Hong Kong.
It’s not my fault.
That I want you
to give me
a raise.

Peel Street Poetry is an open mic poetry night at Orange Peel. It runs every Wednesday of the month except the first. The environment is friendly and they love new performers, so come share your poetry or just listen along to some of Hong Kong’s sharpest poetic talents.

Peel Street Poetry Open Mic
Date: 2nd, 3rd, 4th (and 5th) Wednesdays of the month
Venue: Orange Peel
Tickets: Free
More info:
www.peelstreetpoetry.com

T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land

The Waste Land

T.S. Eliot’s seminal poem, The Waste Land, comes to life in this new, dramatic adaptation.

Internationally renowned cellist David Pereira teams up with actor and Chinese University of Hong Kong professor Julian Lamb to bring you a fusion of music and spoken word which will appeal to aficionados of The Waste Land as well as those who have never encountered it.

T.S. Eliot’s haunting vision of a spiritually barren post-war Europe is brought to life in a performance which draws out the poem’s vast array of characters as well as its rich lyrical language. Dramatic presentations of The Waste Land are rare since it is often regarded as too difficult to perform. A performance of The Waste Land with live musical accompaniment is almost unprecedented.

The Waste Land is the most influential poem of the twentieth century. It is written in short, interconnected fragments, each one offering a glimpse of humans coming to terms with a world which they find increasingly confusing. For nearly a century, readers have been haunted by its images, amused by its comedy, and absorbed by its vast array of characters.

The music will feature passages of improvisation, original composition, and direct quotation from the work of some of the most important composers of the twentieth century, including Sibelius, Shostakovich, and Schoenberg.

“Julian Lamb and David Pereira bring clarity to ‘The Waste Land’,” Canberra Times

“An utterly inspiring performance,” The RiotAct, Canberra

The Waste Land
Shadow Players
When: 22-27 September
Where: Kwai Tsing Theatre, Black Box Theatre
Tickets: $230 ($170 Seniors, Students) from Urbtix
More info:
22-26 September – 8pm
26, 27 September – 4pm
Free Seating
For each purchase of 5-10 standard tickets 10% off, 11-15 standard tickets 15% off, 16+ standard tckets 20% off

I Know What I Want to Live For, and I Refuse to Get in the Way of Myself!

https://youtu.be/16zr6ia-7UA

Unmasked is a stunning, raw, emotive spoken word poem on the subject of depression by Gari De Ramos. bc magazine’s Hannah Ridley spoke to the author about her own fight with depression and the creation of Unmasked.
Read the poem here

What inspired you to create this piece?
Before I actually answer this question, I must explain that I created Unmasked as my MYP Personal Project. Creating a poem was actually not my original intention, I instead wanted to collate several honest and uncensored interviews with anonymous Hong Kong adolescents about their struggle with depression. The goal was to instill sympathy, if not empathy, to those unfamiliar with depression, anxiety, and suicidal behaviour.

When the project began over a year ago, it was very common for things such as depression to be treated like a joke. It was – and for some, still is – seen as something they can use as hyperbole. Hearing phrases such as “Oh my god, they ran out of forks. I’m so depressed right now” or “If I get a five on this assessment I’m going to kill myself” was a common thing which irked me so much. I also had an ask.fm account where people knew I was depressed and would say things such as “but you’re so fortunate and have good grades and friends, how can you be depressed?”. The mental illness I was battling with was being incredibly misunderstood by so many around me, it was clear to me that it needed explaining. I needed to unmask depression.

I created this piece because I hope the following things:

  • I hope that it is a more effective way of talking about depression, unlike the many ways it is danced around in school.
  • I hope to educate.
  • I hope to inspire.

Do you believe your poem did any justice/impacted all of the people you interviewed?
I definitely think that those I interviewed have been impacted in doing so, but possibly in different ways. For a handful of interviewees, it was the first time they had been able to comfortably let out EVERYTHING that was on their mind. They told me immediately afterwards that being interviewed gave them an immense sense of relief – an sensation rarely felt when battling depression and/or anxiety. Whether or not this was case for everyone, I believe I can safely say that each person I interviewed was able to learn more about themselves, since it was such an introspective experience, and that they are now slightly more comfortable with opening up to others.

In regards to doing my interviewees justice, I believe I do enough. When I describe depression in “stanzas” 11-16, I am quoting those I interviewed; I am using their words. I, myself, have never carved the word worthless into my body, nor have have I ever exercised to the point where I would faint, but real people have. I think I did just enough justice to them since I was able to incorporate most of what they had to say, but I will never truly be satisfied until I have the ability to publish the transcripts of our interviews into the general public. I believe that one person speaking for so many can never encapsulate each person’s story holistically and in every detail. Each person has their own story and it should be told by them, but I did what I could to speak for them all, and I believe that is enough.

Were there any emotional/mental struggles that you faced during the creation of this piece?
Interesting question. At the beginning of the process, I was still depressed, experiencing anxiety attacks, and having bouts of suicidal behaviour. But as the research and interviewing stages progressed, the more I noticed I was making a difference. Creating this piece gave me something to be passionate about, which is ultimately a large part in my recovery. As I do mention in the poem, however, I relapsed. I was suicidal and I didn’t see the point in what I was doing, but fortunately at this point, I had come to differentiate the healthy voice in my head from the unhealthy voice. I knew what I was thinking was untrue, and I recognised I had the strength to change it. I doubt I would have been able to reach this point of self-awareness if it were not for the insane amount of self-reflection and somewhat philosophical introspection that came with the writing process.

Has the creation of this piece benefitted you in any way?
Like I said, it was a huge part of my recovery. Of course it is not the sole way I recovered (recovery is a long-ass process with many different variables involved), but it gave me a sense of closure. I was able to learn a lot about myself as I describe in stanzas “These scars don’t make me me” to “I am the only thing I will have in my life permanently” [you can change these to the stanza numbers]. Those stanzas speak for themselves. Although it sounds pretentious, creating this piece made me wiser since project like this requires you to think not just about what you have gone through, but also how that has impacted you. I also discovered the enlightening sense of fulfilment I get from being able to help others and contribute to something more than myself.

Do you believe that creating this piece has changed your mental wellbeing in any way?
As I said it helped me cope and gave me closure. I now recognise when I’m sad or happy or doubting myself. I’ve gotten into the habit of double checking the things I say to myself. Is my negative thinking justified? What can I change about me or my environment to change this? Thankfully it hasn’t returned to the point where I think it is actually justified, or there’s nothing I can do. This is all because I was able to reflect deeply enough, that I was able to realise I actually do know when I’m being irrational.

What do you hope readers will get out of reading or listening to your poem?
With Unmasked, I hope to influence three types of people.
1) People who have no experience or sympathy to those suffering with depression, anxiety, and/or suicidal behaviour,
2) those who are suffering from the aforementioned shitty things,
3) those who have been able to overcome it.

For the first type of reader, I hope they gain a better understanding of what someone with depression goes through, and possibly even heighten their emotional intelligence and empathy. I hope that they don’t view people with mental illness as weak or that depression is something that should easily be overcome. This is important because usually a person’s support system consists of people who haven’t gone through the same kind of emotion, and you need to understand an experience of a person in order to support them.

For those who are currently treading the waters of their mental illness, I hope they find the motivation to keep fighting and that they know they’re not alone.

For everyone, I hope they recognise the honesty, heart, and soul of everyone involved. Everything goes wrong when your brain isn’t functioning healthily. I can safely say that living with and overcoming depression is the most difficult thing I, and many others, have ever had to do, and one of the things I am most proud of overcoming. If a reader can take away this message and develop their sense of empathy, then I would have succeeded.

Has expressing yourself in this way changed you as a person?
Self-expression through writing is not something foreign to me. It hasn’t changed me, it’s who I am and how I do things.

Outside of your personal experiences, how did you learn more about the effects of depression?
As mentioned in the poem, I interviewed 10 Hong Kong teenagers who suffer or have suffered with depression, anxiety, and/or suicidal behaviour (as well as myself). I told everyone I knew about my project and that I needed people to interview, as well as posting about it on my social media. I think an interesting thing about my interviewees is that all the females volunteered, whereas the males needed a little push, which clearly says something about the stigma of men and mental health. Besides the interviews, I did extensive research on the science behind mental illness, as well as frequently met with my school counsellor about mental health issues, particularly depression, anxiety, and suicidal tendencies, among teenagers.

If there is one thing that you could say to those who are currently diagnosed with depression, what would that be?
I think the hardest parts for someone with depression is admitting they need help and being able to get help, and to that, I would say that your mental health comes first so you do everything humanly possible to take care of yourself. I don’t know how to convince someone to live. That’s the hardest part that must be done by yourself, but building a support system will get you through it. Whether that support system be good humans or your Netflix account, find at least one thing worth making it through the day. Recovery is a step-by-step process which is different for everybody, but there is no tutorial. You do what works for you, and all I can say is I hope you find the strength within you to not only make it through this, but live a life that makes you happy, no matter how impossible that seems.

If you have suicidal thoughts don’t keep them to yourself speak to someone. The Samaritins 24hour hotline number is 2896 0000

Unmasked

Every three minutes, five people commit suicide.
By the end of this poem, 12 people would have died.

I could’ve been one of those people.

When I first heard the word “depression” I didn’t know what it meant.
Then as time passed by acquaintances turned to friends.
Day by day, side by side
Depression became the closest friend I had in my life.
Always there to tell me I messed up.
Always there to tell me my best isn’t good enough.

The weight of my failures and flaws and weaknesses
crushing me until I couldn’t breathe.
Pushing people away to see who really cares.
Loneliness haunting, trust always lacking.

My sense of self-worth has always been low.
Being the cause of disruption at home.
Staring at my reflection hating everything I see.
Realising that everything I think will end up killing me.

For me, I guess this started with family.
And when parents parted ways
I was blamed for discrepancy.
“If it weren’t for you, we could still be together”
“You’re too much like her”
“You’re the reason he hates me”

The idea of love,
a happy family,
confidence
disappeared.
But it doesn’t matter where it came from,
it matters that it stayed.

Now almost two years ago
was the first time I wanted to die.
It was also my 14th birthday.
The day had gone just fine,
spent with friends who I am now thankful to call mine
but coming home and believing that
they are worth more.
That I did not deserve them.

I lay in bed ’til 3am crying my eyes out
because I knew I couldn’t handle it.
I couldn’t handle comparing myself to them in every way shape and form.
I couldn’t handle how fragile I was and how easy I would break.
I couldn’t handle living with and being
a monster.

I wasn’t a good enough daughter,
or a good enough friend.
My looks weren’t good enough.
My grades weren’t good enough.
My brain is not good enough.

You see, what goes on inside my mind
doesn’t correspond to work with the daily grind.
Because I am a bottle of uncertainty, psychosis, and insecurity.
When picked up, I’m only destined to fall.
When shaken, everything inside me becomes a tornado,
wrecking chaos into everything I touch and feel.

I would empty my insides so small there was only room for butterflies.
Decorate my plates so it would look like I had ate.
Exercise to the point where I would faint,
simply because I listened to what the devils had to say.
Trapped in my bubble of self-consciousness,
feeling like my chest was going to explode,
like my lungs were going to collapse.

Carving the word worthless into the armature that is my body,
purposely trying to feel pain because I felt so much of it,
I felt nothing at all.

I would starve myself for days,
paint my skin with a blade,
sit alone with smoke in my lungs,
suicide consuming my brain.

And what is worse,
is that I would hate myself for it.
Hate what I had become;
drunk on my depression.
Letting it take over my life and
ruin me.

This depression is a tidal wave.
Starting small then destroying all
sanity, judgement, and hope.
Meltdowns coming in surprise floods of anxiety,
sinking in the depths of my fears and desolation.
With the only comforting feeling in the world being
staring down at the concrete, letting addiction come over me.
Seeing that I’m drowning,
but not knowing if I ever wanted to breathe.

And god damn it,
I wanted to kill myself and you were yelling about dirty dishes.
Where am I supposed to hide these thoughts of mine
for everything I feel has been stigmatized?
For too long I’ve had to keep these demons inside
my wretched mind, but now it’s best to end my time.

—

“I don’t want to have so much anxiety that my throat gets sore,
I forget how to walk,
and I want to destroy all that I touch.
I don’t trust my emotions because they change so much,
but I trust the insanity because it’s always been there.
I’m tired of feeling happy and sad and insane in the span of one year.
I’m tired of thinking there’s hope for me
because I’ll always come back to this.
I don’t want to live a life where I’m predisposed to feeling sadness.”

—

This is the part where I’m supposed to
write about recovery.
This was quite hard for me because
I was four months clean.
Not a single suicidal thought
disguised as a daydream.
I relapsed, welcomed the darkness back
into my fragile, broken soul.
But a relapse is nothing to be ashamed of. This is nothing to be ashamed of.
I made it once before and I damn sure trying again.

For all I know this is going to be a part of me.
A shadow forever following,
thoughts forever lurking
at the back of my sick mind,
but I am alive.

And these scars don’t make me, me.
I am me because of my morals,
my hopes, my dreams,
and everything in between.
But I am not going forget about this.

Through the madness that has defined two years of my life,
I am coming out stronger.
With the ability to notice others’ emotions,
more sure of my ability to survive,
aware of the shitty people,
aware of the great.
More aware of what hope looks like,
fighting with myself to find myself
and if I stumble I have people to smack me in the face
and tell I’m insane.
That I am loved and it’s okay to be sad.

Venting, movies
poetry, music,
friends, family
whatever makes you calm
do more of it.
Petty “relationships”,
familial and societal expectations,
the never-ending pressure from school
are not worth risking your sanity.
Your mental health comes first.

Doesn’t matter if it will take a week or a month or a year,
when they say it gets better
it is so hard to believe, but it’s true.
Believe me, I’d know.
I am the only thing I will have in my life permanently
so I better take damn care of myself.
If you think it’s impossible to find hope,
just know you’re not alone.

Because there are kids like me like you,
all over the world
all over the country
all over this godforsaken town.

And before you come to any conclusions
This is not just me.
This is not just my story.
This is the story of the broken, beaten, and damned.
Of the 11 students I interviewed, one including myself.

A sneak peak of all the suffering, stress, and scars
represented in one story.

This is for the kids who are too scared to try.
This is for the kids who are afraid of their own mind.
For the kids who look at themselves in the mirror
and can’t help but cry.
For the kids who wear long sleeves in the summer.
For the kids who tread the waters of their mental illness
with the weight of the world on their shoulders bringing them down
but they keep going whether they like it or not.

This is for you,
and for me.
For the parents who don’t understand,
and for the parents who do.

For Patch, August, Grace,
Luc Ly, Caitlin, Cage,
Suffocated, Eli
Band Aids & Bravery,
Dazed and Confused.

For the kids who get a little red marker on their wrist
and decide to keep drawing scars
because they think it’s funny.
For the kids who drag scissors across their arm in my science class
because they wanted to know why people cut themselves
then laugh when they don’t get it.

If you think I’m weak,
you clearly don’t understand the point of this piece.
The world is a dark place, and sometimes
it’s hard to see the sunshine
I know what I want to live for,
and I refuse to get in the way of myself.

UNMASKED, a commentary by Gari De Ramos
“I created this – whether it be for the students who didn’t think these problems were prevalent among their peers, or those with similar feelings to those in this video – with the hopes that it exposes the depth, tragedy, and complexity that many live with, to shed light on the stigma of adolescent problems, and to reach out to those struggling who remain in the dark.

I initially set out for my Personal Project, a collection of interviews I had with anonymous students and their tales of depression, to be in the form of a book. As you can see, this isn’t a book. This is a spoken word poem. I was forced to change my final product because I was not informed that I would need to have legal forms signed by my interviewees and their parents, as well as having to undergo a psychological evaluation regarding the ethics of my interviews.

Things got incredibly explicit and raw, eventually to the point where my supervisor could not read more than a page. Even if I had all the legal problems sorted, I still would have been advised to change my final product because my advisor(s) deemed the ethics behind my product to be poor. I would have had to censor my product in case it emotionally hurt my audience, gave ideas to persons in similar situations, and risked revealing the identity of the anonymous interviewees.

After all of this, I was given an extension and changed my product to this spoken word poem. It mainly tells my story, but there are glimpses of the 10 other students I interviewed.

I hope to give my viewers a deeper look into the lives of students, for we are more than just numbers and percentages. We deal with these emotions, behaviors we can’t control, and pain, on a day-to-day basis. But many people don’t seem to understand the gravity of the situation. It is also important to understand that people like me existing with you, achieving with you, striving with you. We are very much like you, we just have a little heavier baggage.

Dedicated to Patch, August, Grace, Luc Ly, Caitlin, Cage, Suffocated, Eli, Band Aids & Bravery, Dazed, and Confused.”

Read an interview with Gari De Ramos here