Colloquium on Wong Phui Nam: from the Salon to Proto-Horror
On 22 May 2026, scholars and readers came together for the Colloquium on Wong Phui Nam: Malayan Letters, World Literature, co-organised by Assistant Professor Ann Ang, from the NIE's English Language & Literature Department and Brandon K. Liew, at the School of Culture and Communications, University of Melbourne.
The hybrid colloquium featured eleven speakers who explored the poetry, criticism and literary legacy of Malaysian poet Wong Phui Nam (1935–2022), a towering figure in the university poetry circles of Singapore and Malaysia in the 1950s. Close to thirty in-person and online participants made for a lively discussion about themes of postcolonial authenticity and Wong’s repurposing of Egyptian and Greek mythologies to express integrity and alienation in his context.
Professor Rajeev Patke observed that Wong's poetic genuis is Miltonian, rather than Shakespearean, using Coleridge's terms. His work is defined by the limit case of Malaysian writing in English, from which its pathos and aesthetics is derived. Daryl Lim reads Wong's darkly grotesque imagery and symbolism as tapping into a longer tradition of the tropical gothic and proto-horror, while Melissa Gay discussed Wong's place in the salon culture of Dunearn Road at the University of Malaya in Singapore, with its open terraced student housing that facilitated such conversations.
The organisers are grateful for the department’s support and for the opportunity to put Malaysian poetry in conversation with larger themes.
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Organisers and presenters at the Colloquium
Melissa Gay (National University of Singapore) presents on the role of the literary salon in 1950s Malaya
Daryl Lim Wei Jie, independent scholar, presents “Wong Phui Nam as Malay(si)an Horror"
