{"id":6472,"date":"2017-06-30T09:42:51","date_gmt":"2017-06-30T09:42:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/?p=6472"},"modified":"2025-02-03T11:44:52","modified_gmt":"2025-02-03T11:44:52","slug":"sean-wai-keung","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/2017\/06\/30\/sean-wai-keung\/","title":{"rendered":"SEAN WAI KEUNG"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018i think i want to write about race\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

really
\nthats really cool
\ncan you do that arent you white
\no so you decided to go full american then
\nwill you send me your poems
\ni think thats a good move for you
\nare they going to be performance poems
\ni thought you hated that sort of thing
\nwhat do you think of sarah howe
\nsweet
\nis that because you feel under pressure to write about that
\nthats so needed in this country especially after brexit
\ni thought you were going to write about honesty
\nno offence but why bother
\nhave you told your mum
\nhave you read sarah howe
\nyou should ask for funding so you can go back to hongkong
\no thats actually pretty interesting
\ngreat move thats what the arts council likes
\ni thought you were going to write about performance poems
\no that makes sense i guess
\ndidnt someone do that last year or was it the year before
\ngood on you
\nyes yes yes yes excellent
\nhave you really experienced that sort of thing then
\nyes
\no good i hoped that you would
\nthats kind of brave of you
\ni thought you were going to write about food
\nwill you get to go back to hongkong
\nisnt that the sort of thing you normally hate doing
\nis this because you did that thing at soas last year
\nthat is so super exciting
\nim so glad
\ncan i read it after<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I really want to write about Sean Wai Keung\u2019s new pamphlet. It\u2019s called you are mistaken and we\u2019ve just published it. I didn\u2019t judge the competition it won and I didn\u2019t have much to do with preparing it for publication so I think I\u2019ll be safe from accusations of \u2018you would say that wouldn\u2019t you\u2019. I think it\u2019s bloody brilliant.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve maybe gone for the obvious poem to use as an example (and then I do think that it, and the title poem \u2018you are mistaken\u2019 need to be required reading in everybody\u2019s list of where poetry\u2019s at today). Incidentally, hey, welcome back lower case poetry, popular in the sixties because it instantly debunked portentousness (though where we used the ampersand Sean uses +).<\/p>\n

Anyway this is Sean\u2019s method. He has a stingingly accurate ear for the howlingly patronising jargon of common conversation, the laziness of our speech. And he uses it to pile up evidence of ignorance. I love it. Look at that \u2018really\/ that\u2019s really cool\u2019. Don\u2019t you know that speaker? The unwitting representative of our world in which everything, as Susie Orbach said the other day, is either \u2018Awesome\u2019 or \u2018Terrible\u2019.<\/p>\n

And this is clever writing. You have to be intelligent to get this right, to not overdo it, not go on to long, and to know how to place the punctuating refrains, \u2018sarah howe\u2019, \u2018performance poems\u2019, \u2018i thought\u2019. And when to go in hard \u2013 \u2018have you really experienced that sort of thing then\u2019. Starry stuff.<\/p>\n

How can you not cheer a poet who says, in his poem \u2018earnings\u2019, where he\u2019s daydreaming as he works at a checkout, \u2018i think about winning awards\/for my poems or for being\/a good human being\u2019?<\/p>\n

And how can you not be excited by a poet who in fourteen lines moves from \u2018pu describes pure simplicity or rawness\u2019 via \u2018universal truth\u2019 and \u2018nuclear warheads\u2019 to \u2018your laptop is filled with dead ancestors\u2019? This is from the third poem in the pamphlet, one of seven \u2018taijitu\u2019, a poem that can also be found on page ten of the current issue of The Rialto, if you need to read another sample before you buy\u2026<\/p>\n

Michael Mackmin<\/em><\/p>\n

You can buy the pamphlet here<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018i think i want to write about race\u2019 really thats really cool can you do that arent you white o so you decided to go full american then will you send me your poems i think thats a good move for you are they going to be performance poems i thought you hated that sort […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6475,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[204],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6472"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6474,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6472\/revisions\/6474"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therialto.co.uk\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}