Leung Ping-Kwan’s “Poem with Dinosaur” describes a scene in which the speaker hears a roar from a television, as if a dinosaur were about to appear, then muses on his observations while he waits. Many of his observations include details relating to specific consumer products, such as “Chanel suits” (line 8) and “CK One” (line 27). The speaker appears to be disappointed with the way these products have taken over society, lamenting that words have lost value for society, replaced by consumer technology; he writes, “A million trivialities stop you from/ believing in a world made up of words” (lines 12-13). From these details, we can see that the speaker is disappointed in the world he currently inhabits, implying that the concerns of everyday people have become shallow.

The overall narrative structure of the poem begins with the speaker hearing the dinosaur roar, and as he waits for it, he begins to watch the people around him. He remains unnoticed, so his role is more of an observer. He slowly becomes discouraged by what he sees, then laments the value of words. He identifies that he has no control over what images appear on the television set, and the poem concludes with the realization that the dinosaur never appears, even though it was hinted at by the roar he heard earlier. The speaker is a passive bystander to the events described in the poem, which illustrates his main point: in this setting, the speaker has no actual control over his circumstances. Even words he might use to communicate to others would be unnoticed, as they stare absent-mindedly at their mobile phones, or become entranced with other superficial trinkets.

From a postcolonial perspective, the scene that the speaker describes is one that has been overtaken by capitalism. In this instance, the reference is to “Hong Kong’s newly found capitalist culture” (Loomba 53). The use of specific brand names such as Chanel highlight how people have become so entranced by brand names and technological gadgets that they forget how to communicate with one another. The words the speaker relies on no longer have the same meaning they used to. The description of the dinosaur can be interpreted as what the speaker would believe to be the lost soul of his country: dinosaurs are massive, exotic and grand; however, they are also extinct. This is emphasized because the dinosaur never appears on screen, even though it was hinted to appear. Similarly, the country he inhabits, before colonialism, can also be seen as a once great nation that no longer exists. Even though there might be those who hint at the return of a great nation, this never occurs, much in the same way the dinosaur never actually appears. What the speaker laments about his country’s colonial past is that it has replaced the value of words with consumer products, all of which seem to captivate everyone but him, who still longs for a time when people used words to communicate in person. Now all he sees are people staring at their phones, blankly watching television screens, and obsessing over designer products. The country he has known has become shallow.

“Poem with Dinosaur” can therefore be seen as a critique of capitalist society, and the implication of the poem is that capitalist forces, through colonialism, have “transformed society into becoming superficial” (Abbas 142). The dinosaur is an image that he hopes to appear after hearing it on the television set, but it never actually materializes. This is the same as him longing for his country, perhaps believing that it may one day return, but the realization made at the end of the poem is that like the dinosaur, the country he longs for is also extinct. However, the poem is not entirely pessimistic, as he still has his words, which is what he attributes true meaning. In writing the poem itself, it is as if the speaker is holding on to the power or words and using them to communicate the only way he knows how in a postcolonial world.