Projects & ComMissions
TIDE: Travel, Transculturality, and Identity in England, c. 1550-1700 (2018-202)
I was a writer-in-residence for the European Research Council-funded project at the University of Liverpool, led by Dr Nandini Das, creating poetic responses to sixteenth and seventeenth-century source material on the theme of cross-cultural encounters. I wrote a suite of six poems responding to objects from the Chinese Porcelain collection in the World Museum, Liverpool, collaborating with the museum and TIDE to create a new installation on Chinese export porcelains, world trade and intercultural connections in their World Galleries, with my poems at its heart.
2,000 year-old model of an earthenware horse and a porcelain cup illuminated during an immersive experience of Chinese ceramics, featuring exclusive poetry by award-winning poet, Sarah Howe. © National Museums Liverpool.
Crick Institute: Deconstructing Patterns Exhibition (2017)
In collaboration with Poet in the City, the Crick invited myself and sound artist Chu-Li Shewring to journey into the world of genomic patterning. Guided by staff in the Advanced Sequencing Facility at the Crick, we met a range of scientists across the institute, each one seeking and scrutinising patterns within different areas of the genome. With Shewring, I wrote and recorded the poetic element of sound piece, ‘A New Music’, installed in the Crick’s exhibition centre.
Visitors to the Deconstructing Patterns exhibition at the Crick Institute, London, listening to my poem in an immersive sound art installation designed by artist Chu-Li Shewring.
Poet in the City: Lullaby Too Rough (2017)
A musical collaboration with Thai-Chinese composer Prach Boondiskulchok, performed at Kings Place, London; a new poem written to accompany his ‘Night Suite’ for piano trio, followed by the European premiere of an operatic song-cycle based on a poem from Loop of Jade. Listen to an interview with me about the collaboration. Watch a recording of a performance of Prach's piece, which is in five movements:
'Goose Daughter’ by Prach Boondiskulchok
I. ‘Proverb’
II. ‘The Lychee Tree’
III. ‘No Name’
IV. ‘Lullaby’
V. ‘Profit, Loss’
New York Premiere of ‘Goose Daughter’ by Prach Boondiskulchok in 2019, a song setting of my poem,‘Tame’
Conversations on a Bench, BBC Radio 4 (2017)
In October 2017, I wrote a sequence of new poems for an episode of Radio 4’s Conversations on a Bench, set in London's Chinatown. My poems drew on oral testimonies collected by the producer Anna Scott-Brown, who spent a number of weeks sitting on a bench outside a bubble tea shop in Gerrard Street hearing stories from passers-by: the life on hold of an illegal immigrant, the gambler who has lost everything and found God but who is still fighting his addiction, the woman whose father committed suicide after the handover of Hong Kong to China, the political exile turned lawyer, the successful businessman, the artist and the chef.
The Odyssey Project: My Name is Nobody, BBC Radio 4 (2017)
I was commissioned to write a verse drama, Telemachus, updating an episode from the Odyssey, featuring contemporary migrant workers torn between a rural Chinese village and the opportunities of a factory town. Telemachus was commissioned as part of The Odyssey Project: My Name is Nobody, a series of ten responses to Homer's epic by poets from migrant and immigrant backgrounds. it was broadcast during Radio 4’s ‘Book of the Week’ slot in April 2017.
Asia Art Archive, ‘15 Invitations’ (2016)
Asia Art Archive invited fifteen artists to celebrate its 15th anniversary; I wrote a poetic sequence, ‘Six Windows’, inspired by visual artworks from their digital research collections. This culminated in a lecture and performance based around the new poems, which sought to provide alternative entry points into Asia Art Archive’s Collection.
An extract from ‘Six Windows’, a suite of poems inspired by the collection of Asia Art Archive
Bristol Festival of Ideas (2016)
I wrote a poem on the theme of ‘Utopia’ to mark the 500th anniversary of Thomas More’s work of that title.
National Poetry Day (2015)
I wrote a poem on the theme of ‘Light’ for the UK’s National Poetry Day in October 2015; my poem, ‘Relativity,’ as read aloud by Stephen Hawking, was made into a short film by artist Bridget Smith.
Polar Muse (2014)
I wrote a poem inspired by Captain Scott’s camera in the permanent collection of the Scott Polar Museum, Cambridge; text overlaid on the object’s glass display case; collected in a special issue of PN Review. Read a review of the exhibition.
Bloodaxe Archive Project (2014)
I wrote a poem inspired by the newly opened archives of British publishing house Bloodaxe Books, held at Newcastle University Library; poem displayed at the project’s showcase in spring 2015.
Screaming Steel: Art, War and Trauma 1914-1918 (2014)
I wrote a poem to accompany the centenary exhibition of First World War paintings and drawings at the Hatton Gallery, Newcastle.
Law/Text/Culture: ‘Two Systems’ (2014)
I created an erasure poem exploring Hong Kong and democracy, for interdisciplinary law journal’s issue on ‘The Rule of Law and the Cultural Imaginary in the Postcolonial World’.
Intimate Distances (2010)
I wrote a poem to accompany an exhibition of camera obscura photographs by Syrian artist Issam Kourbaj, Christ’s College Visual Arts Centre, Cambridge.