Abstract
Poet Tammy Lai-Ming Ho
CREDIT: Kevin On Man Lee
“We call the current movement the water movement,” the award-winning poet tells Index as she talks about the protests that have eclipsed Hong Kong since June.
“We don’t have leaders, and people are doing different things. They compose songs, they design posters, they play music, they come up with slogans, they create new Chinese [written] characters,” Ho said, adding that she encourages people to write poetry as another contribution.
And she practises what she preaches. Ho has written prolifically on the protests since their inception, saying: “The most direct thing I can do is use poetry to react to a specific day or theme or image.”
Her poems, including the one published here for the first time, mix tones of anger with defiance.
“Poetry can serve as a documentation of Hong Kong’s current protests in a way that is different from straightforward journalistic pieces, or even photographs,” she said. “It has a space for imagination… We are responding to events or images that speak to us.”
Ho says that each day can see her emotions jump from hope to despair. When we speak, she is upset.
“It seems we’re heading towards a more violent place, and also [one] with a lot of mistrust between different people in the city, who all actually want Hong Kong to be better,” she said. She says there has been an increase in police brutality, and mentions a student who fell from a high building while trying to get away from tear gas, who has since died.
And she says that whether you are for them or against them, the protests are difficult to avoid.
“There are so many different things going on. In Hong Kong this is very unusual and unprecedented,” she said, acknowledging that Hong Kong was not a stranger to protest, but that the length of these current protests made them stand out. To guarantee their future success, she believes that “consistency and constancy” will be key.
“We need to be very patient, to continue to go out, and to not stop,” she said.
“[We] also need to have the help and assistance of foreign media to not have our story silenced or marginalised – to have our story told to the rest of the world.”
Is there anything that she wouldn’t write about for fear of repercussions? Despite warnings from many people close to her to be careful, she is keen to avoid censoring herself. But there is one topic that is off-limits – her family.
“Even though my own family members don’t read English, they can still use Google Translate. I don’t want to cause disharmony in the family,” Ho said, explaining that they did not all share the same political views.
As for those living across the border, she is not sure whether her work is being read by people in mainland China – many of whom are only hearing about the protests through a heavily-censored and biased media. Would she like her poems to be read there? She answers instantly, enthusiastically. “Yes, I would love that.”
A protester at Yuen Long, Hong Kong, faces riot police
CREDIT: Shutterstock
A people of heightened determination
by Tammy Lai-Ming Ho
Protesters wear masks only because being unmasked is risky, opening up their faces to a city of swallowing smoke, toxic, the background of a dystopian movie – Several shades more horrible.
No one would choose to be dehumanised, called cockroaches, expressions robbed. Legs running from the first sound of batons. The streets are streets of wounds and interrogation, of blood and imagination, of ripped families, of names that are yelled when voices are brutally lifted.
Now, put those faces of torture away and only then speak of unmasking protesters. They have long discovered who’s selling this city, who’s making it rot from the very, very top. So-called ‘public interest’ for these agents of power is but one block in a child’s toy box.
We want to breathe the air of freedom – people are treated like humans, not pieces of bone to be picked or raw meat beaten to tender. Long succession of nights has birthed a people of heightened determination. Watch, whenever there’s a reason, we will be fighting. We are fighting.