Asiatic: IIUM Journal of English Language and Literature
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The Middle Distance: A Reflection on Craft and Art
Get PDFIn The Breaking of Style Helen Vendler examines the point in three poets’ careers when a radical departure from an established style occurs, often in response to a crisis or a change in orientation to art and life. For me the moment of rupture or reversal occurred with the act of migration. From movement and departure, my work has gravitated to a poetic of return and homecoming. The essay attempts to identify this moment of change, and also traces the threads of continuity, the abiding influences from my beginnings as a writer, and which are continuing to shape my emigrant life and work
City of Poets Dreaming: Cross-cultural Poetics in the Case of Macao
Get PDFPoetry of a place is important for making us look again and not merely take for granted the objects and the activities going on around us. The criterion is definitive in the sense that the poem which does not make us look again is not really worth attending to. There’s reflexive potential in that process of “re-visioning†because it maximises the chances of our seeing ourselves in the mirror which the poem-of-place naturally is.   Contemporary Macao poetry – written in Chinese, in Portuguese and in English – should by no means be seen as the beginning of an East/West conversation; we can take it for granted that Macao poets today are the inheritors of varied traditions. Indeed, one might wish to claim that it is the mix of influences which gives contemporary Macao poetry its life. But Macao poetry is not merely the result of a hybrid position between traditions; it is a poetry deeply concerned with place and identity. The present paper is interested in how this particular artefact of culture (a poetry) represents place through an encounter between cultures. Such an interest conveniently situates the idea of poetry as practice of “place-based aesthetics,†along the lines suggested by Raymond Williams’ “radical particularity.â€Â   Dreams are a major preoccupation in Macao poetry today and this paper works to connect various oneiric encounters offered in the poetry with both the symbolic potential of Macao and with its reality as witnessed, historically and today
In the Ceaseless Current That is Grief; Mother Tongue; Maa, Tears Well Up in My Eyes for Ali
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From Epigrams to Tweets
Get PDFMotivated by the paradox that communication technologies that require short forms of writing are both globally popular, but widely criticised, this paper seeks to locate such writing in an historical context. This paper explores the relationship between short forms of poetic writing, which have provided a foundation for subsequent forms of writing appropriate for contemporary media platforms including Twitter, Mobile Phones, Social Media and Email. In particular it examines the epigram, and epigrammatic styles of writing, drawing parallels between them and the short forms of writing required for Tweeting and Texting. It focuses particularly on the legacy of the Roman poet, Martial, whose work influenced many other writers in the English canon, but also draws attention to the popularity and influence of epigrammatic style and form in other languages and cultures
