Home, Away, Elsewhere - Abridged

Summary

A poetry collection in three parts. Home is events, situations, descriptions, and attitudes about Hong Kong, which is now Vaughan's home. Away contains poems about events, situations, descriptions, and attitudes about Aotearoa (New Zealand), in particular from a Maori (marginalised) perspective and also about all the other places where Vaughan has lived – The Republic of Nauru, Brunei Darussalam, The People's Republic of China, Australia, The United Arab Emirates (UAE), The Philippines. Elsewhere is emotions (the entire gamut), relationships (marriages, family, friends), deaths (parents, children), reflections – some wry, etcetera – not specifically tied to physical locations. Vaughan does not write to any set forms/formats but attempts to utilise type-face/shape/what a poem looks like on a page to reflect what he attempts to say. He writes to stay sane. "These poems express what I am, and what I also think people I see are, within. They are not mere academic or literary exercises. They are lived experiences, I guess."

 Poems with attitude. … passionate, uncompromising and sardonic. …there is darkness here … also wit in abundance and a playfulness in language and thought … at times laugh-out-loud funny…. a compelling voice and Vaughan uses it skillfully to tell us his stories, make his often pungent points, and take us places few of us have seen. — James Norcliffe, Robert Burns Fellow (2000), Aotearoa-New Zealand.

 These poems are pieces of an intricately interlinked multi-cultural and multi-lingual world, in which the poet must learn to live. In fact the poet relishes this confusing richness. His verses celebrate the graphic possibility of words, their visual appearance and sounds. So one must come to them with big eyes, big ears and a limitless imagination. — Muhammad Haji Salleh, National Laureate, Malaysia.