Hsiao-Chiang Hope Wang

汪筱薔 — Hsiao-Chiang Wang — many people call her Hope, and perhaps that is the word we all need. Originally from Taiwan and now based in Glasgow, she is a PhD researcher at the University of Glasgow, where she holds the UNESCO RIELA Scholarship. Her doctoral research explores how World Heritage Sites can become spaces of restorative integration for refugees, and she believes deeply in poetry as a method for intercultural dialogue — a way of fostering understanding, healing, and belonging across cultures. Hope is a bilingual poet, writing in both Chinese and English. She has trained in classical Chinese poetry — her Master's dissertation explored the late style of classical verse — and she continues to write contemporary poetry in both traditions. She is the co-founder of the Windsphere Poetry Group for young people, and has received several poetry awards, including the Creative Writing Award of the Ministry of Education, the Yushan Literature Award, and the Penghu Literature Award. Her poems have been published in newspapers, including the Merit Times. Before coming to Glasgow, she served as a cultural policy officer in Taiwan's Ministry of Culture. Her work has always sat at the intersection of heritage, language, and the arts — and poetry, for her, is not separate from this work but central to it. She sees the poem as a space where strangers can meet, mind to mind, and where rivals can sit, side by side, reminded that they share the same sky. She believes wholeheartedly that when we create and write, we are free — and we can fly.