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

Durant, Alan ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5208-4718 (1993) 'Making one's language as one goes along': Wong Phui Nam's 'Ways of Exile'. In: Ways of Exile: Poems from the First Decade. Nam, Wong Phui, ed. Skoob Pacifica Series . Skoob Books Pub Ltd, London, pp. 145-157. ISBN 9781871438093. [Book Section]

Abstract

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.

Actions (login required)

View Item

Statistics

DownloadsShow export options

Export as CSVXMLJSON

Activity Overview

6 month trend

0Downloads

6 month trend

1,232Hits

Additional statistics are available via IRStats2.