HKU Bulletin November 2005 (Vol. 7 No. 1)

Poetry Promotes Creativity A t a time when schools are striving to promote creativity, poetry workshops are seen as one way of helping children get their creative juices flowing. So this year for the first time the University’s Moving Poetry project offered summer creative writing workshops to children aged between ten and 14, encouraging them to weave poetry into their playtime, experiment with language in its various forms and explore new ideas. And the kids loved it so much some were reluctant to leave. Course co-ordinator Monica Zionede-Hall said: “Some of the children were in tears during our last session. They really didn’t want this to be the end of Moving Poetry for the summer.” The classes are offered by our Department of English to kindle a passion for scribbling and enhance students’ communication skills and self-confidence, thus helping them throughout their studies at school. The summer workshops encouraged students to explore their senses and observe the sights, smells and sounds around them and convert their observations into poetry. “The classes encouraged the children to think outsides the box and see things in different ways,” said Zionede-Hall. “Lots of parents wrote to us after the workshops to say their children are more confident now,” she added. The brainchild of poet and author Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Visiting Professor, the project was launched four years ago to promote writing in English for students and teachers. Today it is co-directed by Associate Professor Dr Elaine Ho and Assistant Professor Dr Page Richards and has proved remarkably successful. In its first year, original work by students was featured on buses running across Hong Kong, thus inspiring the project’s title, Moving Poetry . Since then it has branched out to include a series of small and continuing workshops, summer classes and a new website featuring the poetry written in class and an interactive site for visiting poets. Inspired by the belief that the fundamentals of poetry and self-expression can be taught at any age the Department also offers workshops to teachers giving them suggestions that can be easily adapted to the classroom. These are now held in the Department’s new dedicated Creative Writing room in the University’s Main Building. Th i s summe r ’s w o r k s h o p s f o r chi ldren, al l led by pub l i shed poe t s , were the first to be self-funded and were heavily oversubscribed. Ten-year-old Lydia Liu who attended the classes said: “I found the poetry workshop quite useful. I learnt how to write poems and to recognise different kinds of poems.” Her mother Mrs Karen Liu added: “I think it helped her to think more creatively and to express herself and her feelings more clearly. Lydia is already quite confident in speaking and writing English but she has never had the opportunity to write poetry at school so this gave her the chance to try another kind of writing.” The Life of a Long Forgotten City A n exhibition of stunning photographs by renowned photographer Hedda Morrison was unveiled at the University’s Museum and Art Gallery in September to coincide with the launch of a new book of her work. Hedda Morrison’s Hong Kong: Photographs and Impressions 1946-47 by Edward Stokes offers a unique glimpse of a year in the life of a long forgotten city. It brings together for the first time hundreds of Morrison’s black and white prints in one volume. The publication is the result of a labour of love by author Stokes who came across 20 of Morrison’s photographs in a government publication while browsing the University Libraries’ Special Collections. That chance discovery was made ten years ago in 1995 and his long search for her original negatives led finally to the Harvard- Yenching Library and Harvard University to which her husband had bequeathed much of her work. Both institutions, along with the Hong Kong Conservation Photography Foundation and the University Museum and Art Gallery, have been instrumental in bringing about this exhibition. The collection of more than 80 shots taken between 1946 and 1947 represents the most complete pictorial record of the way Hong Kong looked between the 1930s and 1950s. Born in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1908, Morrison developed a passion for photography upon receiving her first camera at the age of eleven. She later abandoned her medical studies and enrolled in the State Institute for Photography in Munich. After completing her studies she travelled to Peking in 1933 to manage a commercial photographic studio and, on completing her contract a year later, remained in the city to work as a freelancer. She made a living selling prints and albums of Peking to wealthy overseas visitors. It was here that she met her husband Alastair Morrison and together they travelled to Hong Kong in 1946 where they spent six months before relocating to Sarawak and finally Australia. Morrison’s photographic interests lay in the lives of everyday people, their work, their customs and their environment. She made a point of traversing Hong Kong’s coastlines, valleys, inner city and outlying districts and captured compelling shots of workers haymaking, harvesting, ploughing and fishing along with panoramic views of Hong Kong island and simple street scenes. Despite her prolific output fewer than 30 of the photographs published in this book have been seen before. Sadly, Morrison passed away in 1991 at the age of 82, but her valuable photographs have finally been returned to their place of origin; the exhibition celebrated the deposit of her prints in the University Libraries’ Special Collection. Hedda Morrison’s Hong Kong: Photographs and Impressions 1946-47 is available from Hong Kong University Press. ARTS 20 21