ACCIDENTAL OCCIDENTAL by DAVID McKIRDY - Chameleon Press (2005) 240mm x 240mm, 96 pages, full-colour plates, ISBN 9889836211, HK$145 chameleon press | buy the book online | e-mail the author

We share the same genes although we speak a subtle different tongue of generations and geography and time. Both still drawn to the sound of the sea that lies between us. In Accidental Occidental, a unique collage of words and images, David McKirdy spins an Asian tapestry of people, places and impressions. A madness fostered by too much distance and too much time masked my total alienation from this totally alien nation. So I'll return cynically clinically wiser, an accidental occidental, re-oriented. One of Hong Kong’s best-known poets, David McKirdy was born in Scotland, raised in Hong Kong and confused in England when he arrived there for the first time as a twenty- year-old. Once he returned to Hong Kong, he never left again. Look inside: Foreword | Ancestral worship | Working Class God Press: The Standard | The Asian Review of Books