'Making one's language as one goes along': Wong Phui Nam's 'Ways of Exile'.

This chapter was written as an ‘Academic Postscript’ to the first Western edition, published in 1993, of the Malaysian poet Wong Phui Nam’s collection 'Ways of Exile: Poems from the First Decade'. The edition also contained an introduction by the novelist K.S.Maniam and an essay of personal reflection by the poet. One of a generation of Malaysians born during the 1930s, Wong is now perhaps best known as a prominent member of the circle of 'university poets', including Edwin Thumboo, Ee Tiang Hong, and Wong himself, who were first brought together in the collection 'Litmus One: Selected University Verse', 1949-1957. These poets, the essay shows, made a highly culturally significant decision to write in English and experimented to an unprecedented degree with modernist poetic form, influenced especially by T.S.Eliot. Collectively members of the group represent an important historical moment in the development of Malaysian literature as well as having produced individually memorable works, including poems contained in this collection and discussed in the Postscript.

Also reprinted in 'South East Asia Writes Back!',Skoob Pacifica Anthology No.1, edited by C.Y.Loh and I.K.Ong (Skoob, London, 1993), pp.284-295, ISBN 1871438195.