Mingled Voices 10

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MINGLED VOICES 10 contains the work of some sixty poets. The one hundred and twenty or so poems were selected from those which were entered for the International Proverse Poetry Prize 2025, the tenth such annual international competition administered from Hong Kong.

The International Proverse Poetry Prize was jointly founded in 2016 by Dr Gillian Bickley and Dr Verner Bickley, MBE, in association with the annual international Proverse Prize for unpublished book-length fiction, non-fiction or poetry, submitted in English, which they also founded, in 2008.

Poems could be submitted on any subject or topic, chosen by each poet, or on the subject selected for 2025 by the Administrators, “The Gift” (interpreted in any way each writer chose). There was a free choice of interpretation, form and style.

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“To move forward or backward has always been my dilemma. This might be true for many of us today, as the angel of history, in Walter Benjamin’s imagination, though driven relentless into the future, keeps his eyes fixed on the past. Like us, the angel is thrust into the storm of time or “progress”, and holding onto something becomes my anchor. For me, that something is poetry….poetry is not only written in solitude, but sustained by those who believe in its enduring value as a community.”

—Zuo Fei, Winner of the Proverse Poetry Prize 2024. 23 February 2026. In Beijing.

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Taken together, the poems of Mingled Voices 10 offer something deeply needed in this moment. In times when war and demagoguery often dominate the public stage, these poems provide a counterpoint: voices that insist on the right to speak one’s own thoughts, to embrace one’s individual history, and to listen to history echo through the voices of others. The result is a collection that does not erase difference but instead celebrates distance – geographical, cultural, and emotional – as the very space where voices meet. This collection is powerful and important not only for the individual poems it gathers but also for the conversation they create together. Like the myths that echo through several works, the poems here trace a path from loss to memory, memory to strength, and strength to the quiet courage to be oneself. Readers are invited to experience the diverse textures and voices gathered here and to enjoy, as I have, the many ways these poems transform the difficulties of our shared world into language that lingers – then endures.

—From the ‘Foreword’ to Mingled Voices 10 by Charles Lowe, Head, Department of Languages and Cultures, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Beijing Normal-Hong Kong Baptist University

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“The Gift” was the suggested theme for the International Proverse Poetry Prize, from which the poems in this anthology are drawn. In Tanusha Nagrath’s beautiful first prize-winning ‘Elegy – A gift from those who have gone’, what’s received after the death of a loved one is a “black box of sorrow”, which brings only a “numbing comfort” as time seems to erase details even as it soothes. In Gary Beaumier’s ‘Just before you fly away’, the gifts are the simple possessions left behind by the recently deceased:

The suggested theme was not the only inspiration for these poets, however.  As Gillian Bickley mentions in her editor’s note, some of the writers discover their creative spark ignited by other texts, especially classical ones. Other poems in the anthology locate their inspiration in nature. 

There is much stunning imagery in the poems in this volume. This vivid and compelling use of language reminds us that poetry is a gift, not just in the sense that some writers are gifted enough to wrench us from our quotidian slumbers. It’s also that their poems come to us as gifts of words. And in this anthology, the many mingled voices offer us their diverse perspectives, hard-won wisdom, and beauty.

I began with Tanusha Nagrath’s winning poem on a note of elegy, and I’d like to end on that note too. I believe that the beauty and grace of so many of the poems in this book are a fitting tribute to the man we lost last year and still mourn: Verner Bickley. Throughout his long and creative life, Verner laboured to bring about “cross-cultural understanding and peaceful, collaborative co-existence among all”. He once said, “I would like to be remembered as someone who realised what the overall mission was.” Through the lasting legacy of Mingled Voices and the many other books and projects he worked on, many of them with Gillian, his memory – and that mission – will surely last among us.

—From the ‘Preface’ to Mingled Voices 10 by Jeffrey Streeter, Writer and Critic, onetime Director of the British Council in Hong Kong.