3. • Ee Tiang Hong (1933–1990) was a Malayan poet of Chinese ancestry
• He was born at Malacca during the British colonial period
• He was one of the first-generation Malaya poets writing in English. His first book of poetry
appeared in 1960
• He was extremely disturbed, troubled, and disillusioned by political developments in the newly
independent Malaysia and, in particular, the May 13 Incident had a profound impact on him as
is demonstrated in his poetry. Later, he emigrated to Australia with his family and settled down
in Perth in 1975. He officially became an Australian citizen in the year 1979. He died of cancer
on 27 April 1990 in Perth, Western Australia
4. THEMES
• As a poet, his works concentrate on discrimination, dislocation, exile, identity and idea of
home signifying his own personal journey and condition
• His works remain highly influential in the literary landscape of postcolonial post-independence
Malaysia
• Malayan traditional literature reached the public in the form of stage plays and shadow plays
• Contemporary Malayan literature is identified with the author and is presented in the written
form
5. • Various political, linguistic and cultural circumstances had rendered and
marginalized both as a poet and as a citizen
• He was not silenced by the predicament and viewed poetry writing as an act
of resistance
• He struggled with the undercurrents of the political and racial policies and
soon became a Malaysian poet in exile. His sadness, sense of dejection and
displacement soon pervaded his poetry with the remembrance of his homeland
and the past
6. • He published three poetry collections:
1. I of the Many Faces (1960)
2. Myths for the Wilderness (1976)
3. Tranquerah (1985)
• These three works represent the poet’s three significant period of social and political
experiences
• The poet tries to establish a counter authority through his poetry. His poems are interesting as
they are written in English, a language that was marginalized in his homeland
7. ARRIVAL
EE TIANG HONG
And this is the terminus of truth?
Objectives of the dreams and all
The speculations we saved up
A lifetime and paid for?
This dust and this laterite?
And this the welcome await us,
The glossy pamphlet promised
During the Long hours to console
A tedious journey?
This dust on a barren ground?
Are we really arrived, having we
Really reached as the smooth guide says The great and beautiful city?
Where the perennials thorn less an lovely
Bear only fragrant thoughts and men
Open as flowers, pure as sky?
Dust grits my eye
