http://www.asiancha.com/content/view/1800/454/
Poetry is something that I have never indulged much in, and although I appreciate the written and spoken word.. I am an amateur at best when it comes to having an opinion. I happened upon “Ancestral Worship” a poetic journal quite accidentally. The book literally fell in my lap. Mr David McKirdy, the poet, is a transplanted Briton with the soul of Hong Kong racing through his blood, faster than the bikes he rides. He starts our journey with the title poem “Ancestral Worship” where we feel his infusion/transfusion of the old Blood of China in a clinical and factual report.. That brings us to fragments of his life, put to verse from early childhood to the rebirth of the man that made Hong Kong his home.
Words make you feel. And see. And maybe not understand but somehow have something imparted in the soul.
Such is David McKirdy’s work.
Although I suspect if we were to ask him, he would not consider it work.
David describes himself and his relationship with Hong Kong in a very modest manner that is in keeping with his demeanour. ” I consider myself an Asian writer. Hong Kong has always been a city of immigrants and I am simply one more that has been welcomed and made the city my home” Having said that .. the depth of his verse belies but also celebrates that simplicity.
Healthcare and Humanity is fortunate to have the opportunity to share some of David’s work, both in his first anthology “Accidental Occidental” from 2011 and more recently “Ancestral Worship” published in 2014. In both he expresses his experience with cancer with candor, sensitivity in an a manner that both belies and embodies reality. Poet, vintage car mechanic, dirt bike racer, ambassador, friend, sage, patient.
Please enjoy David McKirdy’s work and remember the Art of Medicine also is embodied in the patient.
