THE MAN HONG KONG International Literary Festival starts tonight without its biggest stars - literary heavyweights such as Maxine Hong Kingston, David Mitchell and critic John Carey. Instead, festival organisers chose to open at the Fringe Club with five part-time poets from Hong Kong who have published collections in the past six months.
The poets, and the businessman who published four of them, are quick to temper any claims that Hong Kong has a literary scene to match the established English-language poetry traditions of Singapore and Malaysia. But the boldness of the move to kick off with local talent suggests they are willing to fight declining English-language standards and the image of the city as a cultural desert.
The Scorchers, as the five call themselves, will offer their poetry as a mock rock music gig - a reference to their mission to make poetry sexy.
But only one, Mani Rao, has serious rock'n'roll attitude. The Indian-born television executive writes daring poetry, and performs it powerfully. Rao was one of the founders of the Outloud poetry readings, which began five years ago in a tiny bar called Steps on Aberdeen Street, Central. They have since moved to the Fringe, where, on the first Tuesday of each month, they pull a consistent crowd.
Rao's most recent release, echolocation, her sixth collection, was launched last September. With a reflective silver cover and unusual page design, echolocation is a sniper attack of jarring and sometimes violent poetry.
Her interview is just as blunt, opening by popping the Scorchers bubble. 'I don't think there's an English-language literary scene in Hong Kong yet ... although there's more noise and more books and events than four years back. It's a small circle, and you get known in that small circle, but so what? In Hong Kong, we have a small scene and feel inflated by that. I think that's bad, but it's an evolution. Maybe it'll take a few years.'