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0When the needle first pierces your skin, there’s a tingle—an electric awe. The pain is fleeting, but the ecstasy lingers, tracing from flesh to the deepest chambers of your heart. You’ve waited for this moment all your life: to etch permanence into your body, to claim an agency beyond words. Unspeakable agency. Unrelenting agency.
This episode features transoceanic dialogue between former Accent fellow Winnie and acclaimed Hong Kong Tim Tim Cheng (she/they) on her debut poetry collection The Tattoo Collector - a lyrical and experimental excavation of diasporic memory that maps self mythology across Hong Kong, Scotland and London, while deftly unraveling the complex interstices of being, linguistic identity, and the politics of belonging.
Through the unapologetically feminine and piercing prose of Cheng, we glimpse a childhood cradled in a working-class immigrant family, estranged nights in Eastern Europe, and dreams suspended between Hong Kong and Glasgow. In The Tattoo Collector, Cheng unveils a world we once feared to see—a world where she doesn’t just survive but transforms.
Cheng holds her needle tightly. There will be a war between your mother tongue and English, a silent dialogue between the system and the self, a clandestine kingdom woven between textures of wet and dry: until it pokes through the skin deep surface, with words that were able to carry meaning for the very first time, indelibly penetrate through us.
Tim Tim Cheng (she/they) is poet, translator, editor, and teacher based between Hong Kong and Glasgow. Her full collection The Tattoo Collector (Nine Arches Press, 2024), longlisted for the Jhalak Poetry Prize, was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Her pamphlet Tapping At Glass (VERVE, 2023), shortlisted for The Kavya Prize 2024, was named one of The Poetry Society’s Books of the Year.
Host/Text/Edit: Winnie Dongyi Wang纹身收藏者是谁？
当针尖初次刺破你的肌肤，会有一阵战栗——一种令人震颤的敬畏。痛楚转瞬即逝，但狂喜绵延不绝，从皮肉直抵心脏最幽深的腔室。你穷尽一生等待这一刻：将永恒镌刻进身体，夺取言语无法形容的自主权。不可言说的自主权。不屈不挠的自主权。
本期节目呈现了Accent的春季fellow Winnie与香港诗人郑恬恬（她/ta）跨洋对话，围绕其首部诗集《纹身收藏者》展开探讨——这部充满实验性的抒情诗作以离散记忆为经纬，在香港、苏格兰与伦敦之间勾勒出自我神话的版图，同时精妙剖析了存在、语言与归属政治之间错综复杂的交织关系。
透过郑恬恬那充满女性锋芒的文字，我们得以窥见一个工人阶级移民家庭孕育的童年，东欧的疏离夜晚，以及游荡在香港与格拉斯哥之间的迷梦。在《纹身收藏者》中，郑恬恬揭开了我们曾经不敢直视的世界——一个她不仅幸存而且重获新生的世界。
郑恬恬紧握她的钢针。母语与英语必将交战，体制与自我终将沉默对话，在湿润与干燥交织的纹理间，一个隐秘王国正在成形：直到它刺穿肤浅的表层，那些首次能够承载意义的文字，将不可磨灭地穿透我们。
主持/文稿/剪辑：王东怡
