Poetic Imagination of the Malaysian Unconscious: Voices of the Youth

摘要

This paper examines the perspectives of young Malaysians in their re-interpretations of two significant historical aspects of Malaysia, namely events in SejarahMelayu and in the country's struggle for independence. Dismantling the poetic narrative is a pre-requisite to their practice of re-visioning the nation's past prior to transforming the narrative into poetry. Reading from a New Historicist viewpoint provides them with an 'option'of an alternative in reading and understanding history. Their poetic imagination, though that of the novice, offers insights into issues of identity and nation. By looking at the explicit in selected poems that have been published on-line, we will also explore the implicit - gaps and cracks in these narrations - which will form the basis for theorising the Malaysian unconscious.