DREDGING UP SILT – RECLAIMING THE RIVER : POETIC REPRESENTATIONS OF MACAO FOR THE ENGLISH-LANGUAGE READER清除淤泥，開墾河道：英文詩詞中的澳門
This article examines how recent (largely post-1980s) English-language poetry about and from Macao represents the city as both historical stage and symbolic “otherworld portal” between East and West. Rather than treating contemporary Macao poetics as the start of a simple intercultural dialogue, the...
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| Published in: | Review of Culture |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Articles |
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Instituto Cultural de Macau
July 2009
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| Online Access: | https://www.icm.gov.mo/rc/viewer/pdfViewerParts/40031/3598 |
| Summary: | This article examines how recent (largely post-1980s) English-language poetry about and from Macao represents the city as both historical stage and symbolic “otherworld portal” between East and West. Rather than treating contemporary Macao poetics as the start of a simple intercultural dialogue, the paper argues that Macao writing inherits multiple global literary traditions while grounding its imagery in a locally experienced sense of tangible continuities and ruptures. Methodologically, the study performs a thematic and close reading survey of published poems for the English-language reader, focusing on recurrent motifs—including border economies, gambling and “luck,” prostitution and marginal figures, development, and reclamation—through which poets negotiate the tension between orientalist or connotative place-making and direct witnessing of everyday Macao life. Special attention is given to spatial and geographic “illusions” in the poetic imagination (e.g., Macao’s frequent portrayal as an island, or mountain views borrowed from across the border), which both aestheticize and disclose Macao’s political embeddedness within the PRC. The article concludes that contemporary poetry turns reclamation and dredging into metaphors for cultural mixture and misunderstanding, revealing how poetic representation accounts for Macao’s hybrid, world-historical significance. |
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| ISSN: | 1682-1106 |