New Zealand Poetry Society PO Box 5283 7KH1HZ =HDODQG 3RHWU\ Lambton Quay WELLINGTON 6RFLHW\ Patrons Dame Fiona Kidman Te Hunga Tito Ruri o Aotearoa Vincent O’Sullivan President Margaret Vos With the Assistance of Creative NZ Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa E-mail:
[email protected] Website: www.poetrysociety.org.nz is the number of writers in this country who could now readily identify with the statement given in my JAAM F ¬ G 7KLV0RQWK V0HHWLQJ essay by the Australian poet and emigrant, Dmitris Tsoulamas. Tsoulamas stated that there are those who leave 'their home either out of love of adventure, or David Howard because of personal impasses, or because they were Thursday March 18th 2004 hounded by semi-democratic or entirely fascist regimes…for these victims of intellectual disquiet, of 8.00 p.m. Turnbull House analytical disposition and perspicacity, the problem takes & on complex and particularly troublesome dimensions: … Readings from a loosening of the fabric of their whole existence, a chasm ‘Writing the Landscape’ Course between the here of their struggles and the there of their IIML Victoria University memory which keeps growing uncontrollably … For those people there's but one salvation: language, to which they cling like a shipwreck to flotsam, and on which all The Multilinguists: their passion and everything meaningful in their lives is the Rise of Migrant Poetry & centred.' the Poetry of Exile Keeping Tsaloumas' statement in mind, go out to a local poetry reading in Wellington now and you may not In JAAM 7 (May 1997), I wrote an essay on the be hearing the usual pub or Beat street poets, but instead Malaysian-Chinese poet Ee Tiang Hong who had may probably hear a rich and diverse mix of ethnic emigrated to Australia.