'Parang is the second collection of poetry from former Australian Poetry Slam winner Omar Musa. Written over four years, the collection explores Malaysian jungles, dark Australian streets, and dreams. Dealing with the issues of loss, migration and belonging, Parang is an incisive and sometimes raw look at the here and now of a changing world.' (Publication summary)
'This article examines two poetry collections by Omar Musa (b. 1984) and his hyphenated identity as a Malaysian Australian. Extending Jahan Ramazani’s concept of transnational poetics, it draws on Omar’s comments about the importance of the hyphen in his personal and artistic self-fashioning to argue for the presence of a “hyphenational poetics” in his work. This poetics functions as both hyphen and parang (machete), enabling transnational connections and sociopolitical critique. It is evident in the mixture of Malay language and Malaysian cultural details, African American hip-hop rhythms and aesthetics of spoken-word or slam poetry in Musa’s anglophone poems. His poetry performs a simultaneous critique of the sociopolitical status quo of both his ancestral homeland of Malaysia and his country of birth and citizenship, Australia. His hyphenational poetics offers one way of thinking beyond the national–sectional division in Malaysian literature, focusing instead on in-betweenness and cross-cultural borrowings and exchanges.' (Publication abstract)
'This article examines two poetry collections by Omar Musa (b. 1984) and his hyphenated identity as a Malaysian Australian. Extending Jahan Ramazani’s concept of transnational poetics, it draws on Omar’s comments about the importance of the hyphen in his personal and artistic self-fashioning to argue for the presence of a “hyphenational poetics” in his work. This poetics functions as both hyphen and parang (machete), enabling transnational connections and sociopolitical critique. It is evident in the mixture of Malay language and Malaysian cultural details, African American hip-hop rhythms and aesthetics of spoken-word or slam poetry in Musa’s anglophone poems. His poetry performs a simultaneous critique of the sociopolitical status quo of both his ancestral homeland of Malaysia and his country of birth and citizenship, Australia. His hyphenational poetics offers one way of thinking beyond the national–sectional division in Malaysian literature, focusing instead on in-betweenness and cross-cultural borrowings and exchanges.' (Publication abstract)
