Compared to classical poetry in many indigenous Asian languages, Asian poetry in English has a very recent provenance. East of the Indian sub-continent, in the time of the British empire, English had more often been the language of trade, commerce, and technology transfer than of literary and imaginative writing. In Francophone Asia or what used to be French Indo-China, and other European linguistic areas, for example, the former Dutch East Indies, English would not have been allowed to prevail at all. A third aspect of this history concerns countries like Thailand, China, or Japan which had been shaped by the impact of European imperialism but were not officially colonized. This variegated history helps to explain the uneven presence and current productivity of poetry in English in East and Southeast Asia.

After colonialism, English was adopted as the official language in Singapore and Hong Kong, and it is in these areas that poetic creativity in English found a more congenial environment for development and gained the greatest momentum. But the perception of English as a colonial legacy and the contemporary medium of American hegemony had also dislocated English from the linguistic and cultural maps of some countries, notably Malaysia. In this respect, the colonial prestige of English is no guarantee of its continued importance in Asia, and might actually cause a downgrading of its status in some countries. However, consistent with colonial times, English, as an international or global language, is now acquired for instrumental purposes, to facilitate career advancement rather than for literary creativity. The experience of poets writing in English is haunted by the complex sign of English as a colonial language, the means of communication within and outside the nation, the destroyer of indigeneity and release from its imposed and coercive forms.

Compared to poetry in the indigenous languages, poetry in English continues to be a minority activity. But it is precisely in this minoritization, the product of the stresses and strains sketched above, that poets find rich sources of inspiration and creativity. From learning the language in the classroom to using it creatively, they write about their own access to English as a way of commenting on family, kinship and social relations, history, and contemporary realities. And from accessing, through English, the canonical literature and cultural tradition of the Euro-American west, the poets move on to explore their own place in this tradition. Their poetry pluralizes English so that it is no longer exclusive to its traditional literary users and audience but engages with a changing and expanding world of non-western cultures and ethnicities. In this imaginative and cultural engagement, they offer alternatives to English’s instrumentalised globality. As part of America’s informal empire, poets in countries which were not colonized by the British are also writing in English.

A crucial aspect of this engagement is formal. Many of the poets writing in English also have access to one or sometimes several indigenous languages. This doubled or multiple linguistic affiliation - which also speaks of plural cultural affiliation - issues on a number of levels: code-mixing, representation of indigenous subject matter, use of traditional forms. These devices point towards the indigeneity of the work itself and demand that it be recognized. At the same time, it can put such indigeneity in doubt by showing how it can be reconstructed in an alien language. This is a discomfiting process and can put the poets in the double-bind of unsettling traditionalists in both English and the indigenous language. In an anxious nationalistic regime, this can lead to withdrawal of support or more serious forms of censure.

Their plural cultural affiliation also makes it difficult to categorise these poets within the frame of a single nation state. This is the case with poets who are axial, that is to say, who travel between their natal and adopted countries both literally and imaginatively, and write about both, or diasporal writers for whom the nation state can no longer articulate a strong frame of self-identification. The following list of websites have been categorized nationally, but some of them, for example, the ones under ‘Vietnam’ and ‘Cambodia’ do not originate from within the country but from diasporal communities now in the United States. However, even as they write in English and about life in America, many of the poets who publish on these two sites identify themselves as ‘Vietnamese’ and ‘Khmer’, and situate themselves in the cultural traditions and recent histories of these nation-communities. This partially, if not entirely, justify their categorization. English’s position within the nation state and as an international and diasporal language are related back to specific colonial and post-colonial histories, and the work of exploring commonalities while also being attentive to the different experiences of individuals and communities will continue to engage both poets and critics alike.

Elaine Yee Lin Ho has B.A. and M.Phil degrees from the University of Hong Kong and a Ph.D in English Renaissance literature from University College London. Her principal research publications are in Renaissance literature, contemporary Anglophone writing and postcolonial theory. She has also published articles on Hong Kong literature and film, and is a member of the Editorial Board of The Journal of Commonwealth Literature and the Advisory Board of Moving Worlds: A Journal of Transcultural Writings, and Fellow, Royal Society of Arts.
Eddie Tay is a graduate student at the University of Hong Kong whose research interests include the literatures of Malaysia and Singapore. His poetry collection, Remnants, was published in 2001.

Singapore

www.thecore.nus.edu/landow/post/singapore/literature/poetry/gallery.html
A Gallery of Young Poets: Showcases a selection of poems by what is regarded as the emerging generation of Singaporean poets.

www.fas.nus.edu.sg/ell/new_voice.htm
Singapore Poetry: Consists of audio recordings of poets reading their own poems. Poets featured include poets of the older generation (Edwin Thumboo, Arthur Yap, Lee Tzu Pheng, Leong Liew Geok) and those of the younger generation (Alfian Sa’at, Alvin Pang and Alfie Lee).

www.slope.org/archive/issue15/index.phtml
Slope Issue 15: This particular issue of Slope showcases the works of published poets in Singapore. Includes an overview by guest-editor Felix Cheong.

www.qlrs.com
Quarterly Literary Review Singapore: Singapore’s premier literary e-journal run by poet Toh Hsien Min and a team of editors. Each issue invites submissions of poetry, fiction and articles by local and overseas writers and academics.

www.poetrybillboard.com/
Poetry Billboard: Poetry journal that contains representative voices of Singapore’s younger generation of poets. Edited by Alvin Pang, author of poetry collections Testing the Silence and City of Rain.

www.the2ndrule.com/
The 2nd Rule: Singapore’s ‘urban creative guerilla’ website that promotes works which combines poetry with alternative techno-media.

Hong Kong

www.hku.hk/english
Department of English, University of Hong Kong: website with links to ‘Moving Poetry’, the department’s community-wide project in creative writing in English and poems by participants, and to Yuan Yang, a journal of creative writing, edited by staff and students of the department, with poems by both Hong Kong and international poets.

www.dimsum.com.hk/
Dimsum: An Asian literary journal edited by writers and people in the book industry in Hong Kong. Contains poetry as well as fiction and essays.

www.asianreviewofbooks.com
The Asian Review of Books: An e-journal based in Hong Kong, edited by Peter Gordon, one of the organisers of the Hong Kong International Literary Festival, reviewing works, including poetry and poetry anthologies by Asian writers.

www.asia2000.com.hk
Asia 2000: The website of a publisher based in Hong Kong which contains useful catalogues of recent creative writing, including poetry, by Hong Kong and other Asian writers, with short introductory write-ups.

Malaysia

www.viweb.freehosting.net/WongPN.htm
The Poetry of Wong Phui Nam: one of Malaysia’s eminent poets writing in English. Contains a biographical write-up and poems from How the Hills are Distant

www.viweb.freehosting.net/vilit_Wignesan1.htm
The Poetry of T. Wignesan: Contains a biographical write-up and the contents of his first collection, Tracks of a Tramp.

Vietnam

www.thewriterspost.net
The Writers Post: Contains literature and literature in translation by Vietnamese writers living abroad. Includes a section on poetry in English or English translation done by the poets themselves.

www.askasia.org/frclasrm/readings/r000062.htm
Article on history of Vietnamese poetry: ‘Vietnamese Poetry: The Classical Tradition’ is written by Nguyen Ngoc Binh for the Asia Society's Vietnam: Essays on History, Culture, and Society, 1985, pp. 79-98. It discusses the history of Vietnamese poetry with examples from the tenth to early twentieth century period.

http://ibiblio.org/vietnam/audio.html
Poetry of Vietnam Audio Clips: Consists of audio clips of classical and modern poems.

www.geocities.com/tdl.geo/songvietlit.html
The Poetry of Sóng Viêt-Ðàm Giang: Poetry by a Vietnamese based in North America. Poems are presented in Vietnamese with translations in French and English

Cambodia

www.khmervoice.com
Khmer Voice: A site where Cambodians living abroad publish their poems and forge ‘literary connections’; many poems by young writers on the war in Cambodia either as personal memory or acts of collective memory; interesting to read in dialogue with James Fenton's Children in Exile.

Philippines

http://www.dalityapi.com
e-journal from the Philippines featuring the work of Filippino writers,
including poetry, in both Tagalog and English.

www.penandlink.com.ph
e-journal, based in the Philippines, with a section on poetry including poetry in English