On Oct. 23, Assistant Professor of English Travis Chi Wing Lau and Robert P. Hubbard Assistant Professor of Poetry Michael Leong of the Department of English shared works from their new collections in a joint book launch in the Gund Community Foundation Theater. Before the launch, students had the opportunity to purchase copies of the professors’ collections, titled Dear Vase Already Shattered Against the Fragile Floor and What’s Left Is Tender, respectively.
The event began with Leong introducing Lau and thanking Administrative Assistant in the Academic Division Carla Parsons for organizing and promoting it. Leong then provided what he believes to be a definition of poetry, which gave the audience a frame for the reading. “I was thinking about this event as a celebration of all the different cultural functions that poetry performs, because, of course, poetry is not just one thing but a kind of multi-denominational discourse in which there are a myriad of ways to frame and reframe attention and perception,” he said. This was an apt definition, as much of Leong and Lau’s work is related to aspects of community and the ways in which we interact with those around us.
Leong read from his collection first, beginning with a brief introduction to his work, which focuses on two postmodern orientalist texts: Doubled Flowering by the fictional Japanese poet Araki Yasusada and The Empire of Signs by French philosopher Roland Barthes. Leong spoke about how his interest in the texts arose from their orientalist views of East Asian culture and how the authors wanted to take advantage of the aesthetics of said culture.
Leong’s aim was to write a collection that gave these orientalist writers what they were looking for. In a form that he named “disorientalist poetics,” Leong reframes these stories’ exotic ideas by imagining something he deems truly “dis-orienting.” He includes visual art in his collection, such as handmade collages that helped him get into the mood of the textual collage that he invokes when writing poetry. Leong took a moment to thank William P. Rice Associate Professor of Literature Orchid Tierney, who was present in the audience at this reading, for publishing his first collages.
Lau took the stage second, beginning his portion of the reading by speaking about his appreciation for the opportunity. He expressed feelings of apprehension with reading and writing poetry, as his training was as a literary scholar. The audience shared a laugh with him when he reminisced on an old instructor who once told him to “stick to [his] day job.” Lau’s work focuses on tenderness as a feeling, theory and practice. He is interested in what he names “disability poetics.” One poem in his collection examines 18th-century manuals for a dignified death, a then-popular concept detailing end-of-life care. Lau imagines how they would exist in a modern context, as he believes the current medical industrial complex maintains a loss of autonomy and comfort. Lau’s poetry explored themes of queer history, disability activism and Chinese-American heritage. He ended his reading with a poem about his cat, Mercury, which the audience enjoyed.
Afterward, there was an extended Q&A session, which was guided by the familiarity of the students with their professors. Questions were posed to both professors, and engaging conversations occurred between the two and the audience. There was a palpable interest in the sharing of ideas and methods; the professors were happy to teach whenever and wherever they could.
As attendees filed out of the auditorium, some lingered to speak with the professors while others lined up to purchase books. Students expressed interest in taking classes with the professors after hearing them speak, and even outside The Gund, there was still chatter about the multiple ideas and questions put forth during the talk.