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With the Faculty of Arts of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) as one of its main sponsors, the International Poetry Nights in Hong Kong (IPNHK) will launch Season 2 of Break Out: IPNHK Reading & Dialogue Series in November 2021. Curated by Professor Max Xiaobing Tang, Dean of CUHK’s Faculty of Arts, renowned poets, translators, scholars and artists will be joining this prestigious and multi-lingual online poetry programme in the coming months.

Season 2 of Break Out will have seven event sessions, featuring contemporary poets from Portugal, Greece, Russia, the US and Mainland China along with their translators. The first event of the series will present Portuguese poet Ana Luísa Amaral and Yao Feng, her Chinese translator and poet in his own right, on 20 November 2021 at 8:00pm via Ifeng, Facebook and YouTube.

Two of the seven sessions will pay tribute to important poets of the past. To further enrich online participants’ appreciation of poetry and art, each session will be accompanied by a dance film, a musical performance, or a presentation of visual arts.

The Break Out series is a virtual extension of the International Poetry Nights in Hong Kong, a biennial programme organised by the Hong Kong Poetry Festival Foundation. IPNHK was founded by Chinese poet Bei Dao in 2009 when he was a distinguished professor in the CUHK Faculty of Arts, and is now regarded as one of the most influential international poetry festivals in Asia. CUHK Faculty of Arts is a longtime sponsor of IPNHK.

Developed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Break Out brings world-class poets and their Chinese (or, in some cases, English) translators together. Poets and translators read poetry in different languages and discuss topics of common interest. Livestreamed in seven sessions from May to August in 2021, the first season of Break Out featured 12 international poets, and attracted an international audience of more than 3.3 million people.

“We will introduce some new elements and format in the new season,” Professor Tang said, “Our ambition is to see something which emerged in the depths of the pandemic as an enduring feature of literary culture after the pandemic. These events show us that global poetic voices can play such an important role in our daily life”.

The Season 2 of Break Out will run from November until February 2022. Event details can be found on the websites of IPNHK and the CUHK Faculty of Arts:
IPNHK: https://ipnhkhome.wpcomstaging.com/
CUHK Faculty of Arts: https://www.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/web/index.php/news-and-events