First, a disclaimer before I begin my review of these poems. I have known Prof Malachi Edwin Vethamani (“Edwin” to me) for many years, as an academic, a bibliographer, and anthologist of Malaysian literature in English, and, more recently, as a professor at the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus, where I do some part-time teaching.
But these are not the reasons that I am writing this review of Life Happens, his second collection of poetry (his first collection, Complicated Lives, was published last year).