Drawing on her own experience as a Chinese poet writing and publishing in English, Lam constructed a five-stage model of how people in Asia learn English and begin using it to create
literature. Here she applies the model to 50 Asian poets writing in English, 10 each from Macao, Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines, and India. She focuses on poetry because that is often
the first genre to emerge in a literary community. Her main theme is how the literary use of language emerges within the context of the learners’ general growth in competence in English in
bilingual or multilingual circumstances, and how learners move from the reading and writing of poetry as private individual activities onto the public plane of publication and the related
social participation in their literary community or communities. Annotation ©2014 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)
