Cirrus@Austlit

'I give an annual lecture on the Malayan decolonisation to a room of young Australian university students, whose yawns and elongated faces grow increasingly more weary each year. Black-and-white pictures of Asian politicians and White soldiers overlap on the projector screen, followed by pictures of White politicians and Asian soldiers, each slide disconnected and disconnecting in flashes of texts, maps, essay-pointers and colour-coded flowcharts. I sometimes worry that the human experience gets lost in translation.' (Introduction)

'It is close to midnight. The poet that I’ve been working with has just died, aged eighty-seven. I spent a month or so in his living room recording his entire oeuvre—around seven decades—for my Wasteland audio-exhibition of Malaysian poetry. His face next to mine reading and reading for hours on end, his voice strident, searing through one ear and into the brain, painting an eloquence of words out of syllables and silence. I have spent many years of my career (and a few university degrees) searching for these moments. This experience now feels like an illicit swan song for an audience of one. No other record exists. This poet’s legacy now lives in my laptop’s hard drive. Between deadlines, I don’t have space to think.'  (Introduction)