sikfan glaschu E-Book

Sean Wai Keung

• Herausgeber: Verve Poetry Press
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 55

Beschreibung

these poems were made during five years of eating and living in glaschu, scotland. they should not be taken as reviews – nor should the quality of the poems necessarily be seen to reflect on the quality of any food or place which may bare a similar name, in either a positive or negative light. Food, culture, history, race, food. No-one combines these subjects like Glasgow based, England born, of Hong Kong heritage Sean Wai Keung.

Leseprobe

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sean Wai Keung is a Glasgow-based poet and performer. His pamphlet you are mistaken won the Rialto Open Pamphlet Competition 2016 and he has also released how to cook and be happy, both with Speculative Books. He has developed solo performances with the National Theatre of Scotland, where he was a Starter Artist in 2017, Anatomy Arts, Magnetic North and the Fringe of Colour, and is also a poetry editor at EX/POST magazine. He holds degrees from Roehampton University, London, and the University of East Anglia, Norwich and has been published in 404Ink, Blood Bath, datableedzine and The Suburban Review, amongst others. Full credits can be found at seanwaikeung.carrd.co

Instagram: @seanwaikeung

Twitter: @SeanWaiKeung

‘One example of the “sociology of everyday communism”, according to David Graeber, is “the familiar principle, common in both Europe and the Middle East, that those who have shared bread and salt must never harm one another”. On one level, Sean Wai Keung’s sikfan glaschu is a book about food, e.g. kfc, jumbo tapas, kfc again, pizza hut, xiaolongbao. On another, it’s a book about what it means to share food. Eating together represents the utopian hope of Graeber’s “everyday communism” – made more apparent in the self-isolated world of the pandemic – as well as delineating the boundaries of harm, in the context of endemic racism, “dodgy landlords”, and a degrading service economy. Keung is aware of the cultural essentialism perpetrated by a kind of food fetishism (“chinese food doesnt really exist as a thing”), at the same time as he revels in food’s ability to bind communities: “this place was built by migrants / therefore it is ours”. Tonally, he treads a fine line between affectless melancholy and guileless sincerity, as when the speaker draws a pattern in coffee foam for a customer, “with the heart facing upwards / otherwise its bad luck / [it can look like a ballsack you see]” (‘notes on coffee’). In other poems, he weaves together – or simply reproduces – restaurant reviews, wikipedia entries and online menus. This is a poetry collection as a collective of voices, mainly migrant voices living and working in Glasgow. The effect is of a poetics of care. Even when the speaker is most helpless – “the food banks are all empty and i cant look after anyone / the CB hotel sacked and evicted all their staff overnight and i cant look after anyone” – there’s a baseline hope expressed in the inherent communalism of writing for others. Sharing food is both the metaphor and corollary. “i want to know what strong feelings it evokes in you to watch / your food being made rather than have it appear,” writes Keung. And that’s what sikfan glaschu does: these are poems that don’t just appear pre-formed; they’re made in front of you.’ - Will Harris

PUBLISHED BY VERVE POETRY PRESS

https://vervepoetrypress.com

[email protected]

All rights reserved

© 2021 sean wai keung

The right of sean wai keung to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

No part of this work may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, recorded or mechanical, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

FIRST PUBLISHED APR 2021

Printed and bound in the UKby ImprintDigital, Exeter

ISBN: 978-1-912565-55-9

ePub ISBN: 978-1-912565-93-1

Cover photography by Karlie Wu

For my and . With love.

CONTENTS

fàilte gu glaschu

chinatown

star bar

di maggios

greggs

blue lagoon

sikfan glaschu

notes on coffee

calabash

brian maule at chardon d’or

willow tearooms

tinto tapas

ranjits kitchen

kfc central

baaibaai

rum shack

civic house

dumpling monkey

kurdish street food and shawarma

yadgar

paesano

topolabamba

tomb-sweeping day 2020 glaschu

pizza hut strathbungo

a lockdown changes everything/nothing

stay inside

kfc pollokshaws

the glad cafe

the chicken place

cafe wander

flying duck

conversations from the line outside the supermarket

falafel to go

the wee curry shop

wing rush

bloc

dreams from kitchens

where is the tree my drew

lanzhou noodle

byblos cafe

china sea

nandos

fusion palace

loon fung

yabbadabbadoo

time to go

Acknowledgements

sikfan glaschu

these poems were made during five years of eating and living in glaschu, scotland. they should not be taken as reviews – nor should the quality of the poems necessarily be seen to refect on the quality of any food or place which may bare a similar name, in either a positive or negative light.

fàilte gu glaschu

chinatown

this place was built by migrants

therefore it is ours

they came from the gàidhealtachd

they came from the ghalltachd

sometimes i wonder what my would have thought

had he been given the chance to visit

he had lived in other cities built by migrants

hongkong – liverpool – bradford –

i like to think that if he had been given the chance

he would have liked it

but who can know for sure

when he first arrived in the uk i dont know

what glaschu would have been like

chinatown here opened in 1992

the year after i was born

i moved here three

years after he died

this place was built by migrants

and we have been eating here ever since

star bar

a genuinely nice place and a staple of the stereotypically good

poor local diet – i mean its £3

for a three-course meal what isnt there

to love

you get soup

you get something with potatoes

[or mac and cheese]

you get jelly

***

while somewhere out beyond the faded bricks

the 38 speeds past with a busload of folk heading of

or on to jobs they may

love or hate but at least they have them

and for that price what else did you expect

di maggios

during your visit

when you turned to me and said i promised them [pointing

to them] that glaschu has some amazing italian food

and i looked at them and noticed all their hunger

and you continued so i said to them that you would take us

somewhere nice and you gave me that smile you gave me

sometimes [that same one from my childhood

that i hated]

what i said was thats fine – we can go

to di maggios but what i thought was something else

a sudden blurring of chakras or a fare up

of memories of shouting matches between us in italian restaurants

in cities far away [when they werent with you]

the comic-sans-esque font of a spaghetti house in tsim sha tsui

a disagreement over birthrights at a