Brave New Literatures 2022 / 19 January 2022

Poetry Across the Oceans, part 2

Brave New Literatures Festival

This video collage presents twelve poets of various ethnic "minority” languages in China to capture their voices in their mother tongues such as Tibetan, Uyghur, Yi, Hmong, Jingpho, Xibe, Wa, etc. with English subtitles. Some of these languages are endangered such as Xibe, Jingpho and Wa. This project aims to show how some of the poets in China, although speaking Chinese as a common language, try to preserve their ethnic identities by maintaining their native languages through poetry.