Contemporary Asian Australian Poets

New syllabus (first HSC 2027). This text is prescribed for the 2027 to 2030 HSC under the English Standard 11-12 (2024) syllabus (focus area: Language, identity and culture).
The same Puncher and Wattmann 2013 anthology was on the 2019 to 2026 list for English Standard Module A and EAL/D Module B, but with a different selection. Three poems are set again (New Accents, Circular Breathing and Translucent Jade), and the anthology is now a Standard text only: the two poems that were set for EAL/D in 2019 to 2026 (Circular Breathing and Translucent Jade) are not set for EAL/D in 2027 to 2030. Check older notes against the list below. Sitting the 2026 HSC? See the 2019 to 2026 text list.

What NESA sets

NESA prescribes Contemporary Asian Australian Poets, edited by Adam Aitken, Kim Cheng Boey and Michelle Cahill (Puncher and Wattmann, 2013, ISBN 9781921450655), and sets seven poems from it:

1. Kim Cheng Boey, Stamp Collecting
2. Misbah Khokhar, The Onyx Ring
3. Miriam Wei Wei Lo, Bumboat Cruise on the Singapore River
4. Omar Musa, Airforce Ones
5. Ouyang Yu, New Accents
6. Jaya Savige, Circular Breathing
7. Maureen Ten (Ten Ch'in U), Translucent Jade

Study these seven and no others. The anthology is in copyright, so this page paraphrases and quotes nothing. When you write, take any short quotation exactly from your own copy.

Why this text suits the focus area

The anthology gathers many voices who write about identity, language and culture from different positions, and the seven set poems give you range: memory and objects, travel and return, popular culture, the sound of speech, and the body. Because each poem is short and by a different poet, you can build an argument about how form and voice shape the same questions, such as belonging, inheritance and living between languages or cultures. The range is the point: no single poem speaks for a community.

A first reading of each poem

The titles give you a first line of enquiry, but check every claim against the poem in your edition and the contributor notes.

• Stamp Collecting (Boey). The title points to a hobby built on small, collected pieces of faraway places. Ask how the poem uses objects and memory to hold a divided sense of home, and what the act of collecting says about distance.
• The Onyx Ring (Khokhar). An object-centred title again. Ask what the ring carries (family, history, obligation, desire), who gives or wears it, and how the poem moves between a concrete thing and a larger idea of belonging.
• Bumboat Cruise on the Singapore River (Lo). A title that names a specific place and a tourist-style journey. Ask who is looking, whether the speaker is insider or visitor, and how the poem treats the gap between a place as it is shown and a place as it is lived.
• Airforce Ones (Musa). Musa works as a poet and rapper, so listen for rhythm, rhyme, colloquial speech and performance. Ask how popular culture, brand and street vernacular build an identity, and what the voice claims or resists.
• New Accents (Ouyang Yu). The title puts accent, and so language itself, at the centre. Ask how the poem treats English as a second or adopted language, and what it implies about who counts as a native speaker.
• Circular Breathing (Savige). The title names a technique of continuous breathing. Ask how the poem turns breath into a figure for sustaining something without a visible pause, and how form (line, repetition, sound) enacts it.
• Translucent Jade (Ten). A title of a material that is partly see-through. Ask what the poem lets us see through and what it keeps veiled, and how cultural meanings attached to the stone shape the speaker.

How to read any of the seven for language, identity and culture

1. Who is speaking, and to whom? Identify the speaker's position and any shifts in address.
2. What situation, object or image drives the poem?
3. How is language itself treated? Look for more than one language, accent, naming, translation, silence or misunderstanding.
4. What does the form do? Consider line length, stanza shape, rhythm, repetition and where the poem ends.
5. What is the poem's closing position on identity? Avoid a tidy answer if the poem is uncertain.

Always link a technique to an effect. Naming imagery, tone, repetition, enjambment, direct address or a shift in voice is only a start. Say what it makes the reader understand about identity or culture.

Choosing poems to compare

Choose two or three poems that let you build a developing argument. For example, Airforce Ones and New Accents both put voice and speech at the centre, from very different registers, while Stamp Collecting and The Onyx Ring both work through objects. Plan which poem serves which idea before you write.

Context as a driver of argument

Use cultural and historical context when it explains a choice in the poem, such as why a poem is concerned with a language, a name, a place or a brand. Do not use a poem as proof of how every person of a particular background thinks. The anthology's value is in its range of voices, and the poets write from different generations and places.

Common pitfalls

• Writing about a poem that is not one of the seven.
• Treating the poems as autobiography.
• Generalising about a community from a single poem.
• Quoting loosely. Copy lines exactly from your edition.

Essay scaffold

Introduction

A thesis about how the set poems show language shaping identity and culture, naming the poems (for example Airforce Ones, New Accents and Stamp Collecting) and two or three methods.

Body 1

Voice and address in Airforce Ones, where Musa's rhythm, rhyme and colloquial speech build a spoken identity.

Body 2

The treatment of language and accent in New Accents, with Circular Breathing as a contrast in how a poem can enact sustained sound.

Body 3

Objects, memory and place in Stamp Collecting, compared with The Onyx Ring or Translucent Jade, and how each poem's ending leaves belonging unsettled.

Conclusion

Argue that these poems treat identity as something spoken and made rather than assigned: a rapper's vernacular, an adopted accent and a collector's small objects each build a self through language or things carried between places, and the difference in their forms shows that no single voice stands for a community.

Read the text

The anthology is in copyright. NESA sets the Puncher and Wattmann edition (2013, ISBN 9781921450655). Borrow it from your school or local library, or buy it from a bookseller.

Sources

• NESA, HSC English prescriptions (checked 7 October 2026, year 2026).
• NESA, English Standard Year 12 content pages: page 1, page 2 (prescription lists, checked 7 October 2026).