Jay Gao is the author of Imperium (2022) from Carcanet Press, as well as three poetry pamphlets. He is a Contributing Editor at The White Review. Originally from Edinburgh, Scotland, he earned his MFA at Brown University and is currently undertaking doctoral studies at Columbia University in New York City.
‘Seeing Man’ is a long narrative poem set in the Siwa Oasis, Egypt. Borrowing its title from Mary Louise Pratt’s term ‘seeing man’ to describe the European male subject whose imperial eyes ‘passively look out and possess’, this poem explores themes of travel, Orientalism, ecotourism, hospitality, and queer care.