Soundscapes of Elsewhere: A Poetry Gathering

In today’s hypermobile world, feelings of displacement, uprootedness, loss, resistance, and alienation are no longer confined solely to transnational migration; instead, they are dispersed among individuals who seek belonging across different places. Acknowledging this, following the screening of Ann Hui’s Elegies, we celebrate the diverse "elsewheres" that shape our sense of self through a gathering filled with the resonance of poetry. As our diasporic footprints nowadays increasingly set off from sensory thresholds, such as music, smell, food, ghost stories — the experiential yet elusive threads of homecoming — we warmly encourage you to recount tales that resonate with your own journey. We invite you to bring along poems in any language, so that we can experience the sounds of myriad perspectives on the notion of home(sickness) through your recitations, making it a spatial and linguistic event that enables cultural transpositions between different places and tongues. Whether you choose to share your own verses or simply bask in the multilingual verses prepared by us, we will embark on a journey across the landscapes of imagination and reflection together. (CiLENS)