Andrew Parkin

Andrew Parkin was born in Birmingham, U.K. in 1937. During the war he was evacuated to Yorkshire in the village next to the Brontes' Haworth. Back at school in Birmingham he also worked as a retail butcher after school and on Saturdays. Before going to Pembroke College Cambridge as an Exhibitioner (college grant holder) he studied Russian in the Royal Air Force, spending time in secret bases in the U.K. and Germany. After Cambridge he worked in Hong Kong in the mid-sixties and then went to Bristol where he gained a doctorate in Drama. He emigrated to Canada to work at the University of British Columbia and then returned to Hong Kong to become Chair Professor and Head of English and a Fellow of Shaw College in the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His first three books of original poetry were published in Canada: "Dancers in a Web" (sold out and reprinted 1991), "Yokohama Days, Kyoto Nights" (1992, sold out)and "Hong Kong Poems" (With Lawrence Wong,1997, sold out and reprinted 1999). Ekstasis Editions of Victoria B.C published "Star with A Thousand Moons" in 2011. He has published two major volumes of original poetry with Peter Lang: "The Rendez-Vous: Poems of Multicultural Experience" (2003) and "Another Rendez-Vous: Poetry and Prose from the Cultural Crossroads" (2011). Working in Hong Kong and studying in the Drama Department at Bristol under George Brandt, first Professor of Film in the U.K., gave Andrew many opportunities to enjoy and to think about the art of film. This helped him to write his ode to one of the great film producers, Sir Run Run Shaw of Shaw Studios. This dramatic poem, celebrating Sir Run Run's hundredth birthday and the art of movies (also 100 years old) is in the form of a film script. A friend coined the word "scenariode" to describe this new genre of poetry. The poem was published first in a parallel text with Hindi translation by the Indian poet Anuraag in "Star of a Hundred Years" (ARAWLII, Ajmer, India, 2009) and reprinted in English only in "Another Rendez-Vous" and "Star with a Thousand Moons," where it is accompanied by a Daoist sequence of fragmentary lyrics inspired by small dried and engraved Chinese gourds. Visit wix.com/andrewparkin/author for more about Andrew Parkin.