Taiwan Hakka poetry Conference is being held on May 19, 2024, in association with Dhaka University and Kathak Literary Society, Bangladesh
Taipei
Taiwanese poet Miao Yi-tu, of “Hakka Literature Translation and Overseas Promotion” project said that “we are honored to meet Bengali, the mother tongue of Rabindranath Tagore, the land of poetry!”, commenting on the organization of Taiwan Hakka poetry Conference, tomorrow May 19, 2024, in association with Dhaka University and Kathak Literary Society, Bangladesh
Due to the two-hour time difference between Bangladesh and Taiwan, the meeting on that day will be held entirely in English at Dhaka University, and the guest committee has specially arranged for on-site simultaneous translation by Zhang Jiahao, who has experience in literary activities Taiwanese audiences can listen to in Chinese, Including Professor’s English paper, and interpretation. The impromptu translation from English to Chinese makes the audience feel like they are attending a literary conference in Bangladesh.
“This was our first attempt to hold a transnational literary symposium, which attracted the attention of Bengali academia. The four speakers (presenters) are the elite of Bangladesh’s academia, so the literary symposium attracted 150 people to register and four famous academics came here.”
Shamsad Mortuza to discuss Fangge DuPan
He is an academic researcher, educator, poet, translator and columnist. He is currently a Professor in the Department of English at the University of Dhaka, and served as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB) from 2018 to 2022. He held doctoral degrees as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Arizona, Birkbeck College, and the University of London, and was awarded a Post-Fellowship PhD at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of six books and his popular weekly column, “Blowin’ in the Wind”, in the Daily Star.
Nishat Atiya Shoilee) to discuss Kuei-Hai Tseng
She is a lecturer, Department of English, University of Dhaka. She served as deputy editor of the literary and critical pages of the Daily Star newspaper. Her areas of activity include research in comparative literature, history, narrative studies, and translation.
Noora Shamsi Bahar To discuss Fang Tzu Chang
She holds a Master’s degree in English from a Canadian university, and is a lecturer in the Department of English and Modern Languages, North-South University, Bangladesh. She is of Iranian origin. She participated in academic conferences held in Oxford, Prague and Dhaka and published research papers. She also translated Bengali works into English and published them in daily newspapers, literary journals, magazines and anthologies. She won the Rabindranath Tagore Prize for Translated Fiction in 2021. She sometimes writes poems and has columns in which she expresses strong appeals against social ills.
Amreeta Lethe Chowdhury To discuss Ching Fa Wu
She recently graduated from the English Department of Bangladesh Liberal Arts University. Her areas of activity include literary research, gender studies, postcolonial thought, memory studies, and spatial literature studies. She currently works at the Daily Star Language Research Center and ULAB.
Yang Changzhen, Chairman of the Guest Committee, will open the conference with a video speech in Hakka (with English translation). Host Aminur Rahman, Zeng Guihai and Wu Jinfa will participate in the video reading, and Fang Tzu Chang will read Dubinfang and her own Hakka poems. The online meeting will end with Tu Miaoyi, host of the “Hakka Literature Translation and Overseas Promotion” project, giving a speech of thanks in English and announcing that 8 have been published. Translations.
The Hakka poets, Taiwan, whose works will be discussed are Fangge DuPan, Kuei-Hai Tseng, Ching Fa Wu, and Fang Tzu Chang.
Fangge DuPan was a first-generation poet in Taiwan’s modern poetry scene. She wrote ceaselessly, first in Japanese, then in Mandarin and Hakka, and bore witness to the history of Taiwanese poetry and the social changes in Taiwanese society through her poetic creations.
The two main themes of her poems are the dialogue with the system of political domination and the salvation of the pious Christian faith.
During the February 28 incident, her innocent and revered family members were massacred in a way that nearly destroyed her family. She carried resentment and hatred, but above all she carried a lack of understanding of evil human nature. With her uniquely soft, poetic voice, she condemned the violent cruelty of the regime, and with Christian love, she forgave and guided the force that moved forward. It wasn’t Fangjie. Not only is Dupin a role model for Hakka women poets, she was also an unusual figure in the modern Taiwanese poetry scene.
The works of Kuei-Hai Tseng, a Taiwanese poet and physician, will also be discussed. He began practicing medicine in 1973. Through poetry, he expresses his longing for his homeland. Proposes and participates in public affairs, Taiwanese politics and social reforms. In 1982, he founded the Taiwan Literary Magazine with other writers. For thirty years, he devoted his life to social movements. At the same time, he maintained his literary production, and has so far published 23 books, including 19 poetry collections. He has been the president of the Takao Green Society for Ecology and Studies, Humanitarian, President of Taiwan Literary Magazine, Founding President of Weiwuying Garden Association, Director of Chungliher Cultural and Educational Foundation, President of Southern Taiwan Association, President of Taiwan PEN, President of Lih Si Association, Director of Link Foundation Tui cultural and artistic.
He currently serves as National Policy Advisor to the President. He has won several major Taiwanese awards: Wu Chu Liu Literary Award for Free Verse (1985), Laiho Award for Medical Services (1998), Kaohsiung Prize for Literature and Art (2004), Oxford Prize for Taiwanese Literature (2016), Hakka Prize Contribution Award. Life Award (2018), Taiwan Medical Treatment Model Award (2018). 15th International Poets Prize in Ecuador. He has been recommended as a candidate for the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature.
The conference will also discuss the works of Ching Fa Wu, a novelist, poet, and political and cultural commentator. He has published 4 collections of poetry. Part of the poems translated into 5 languages. Ching Fa Wu served as Vice Chairman of the Cultural Construction Council of the Executive Yuan and has worked in the media industry for many years. In his youth, he wrote mainly fiction, and the selected and translated poems are all modern works.
Finally, there will be a discussion of the works of Fang Tzu Chang, who is a Hakka poet. She first emerged in the renaissance of Hakka writing in the 1990s. She is a rare Hakka poet with the Tabu accent of southern Chiayi County. Although poetry written in Mandarin represents the majority of her poems, writing in Hakka is of profound importance to her creative project. The Hakka language is used to write about family relationships, Hakka stories, stories of elders, pictures and details of life, Hakka history, their products, and food customs and culture. It is a new force in Taiwanese mother tongue literature that stands at the forefront of writing in the Hakka language.
An anthology of these four poets has been translated from English into Arabic, for the first time, by the Egyptian poet and novelist Ashraf Aboul-Yazid, in a book published in the Silk Road Literature Series, Cairo, 2023.
Read: A Fresh Translation Introduces Contemporary Readers to Tagore’s Gitanjali
__________________
