Gay Poets and the Urbanism of Manila and Singapore

Abstract

The thesis examines the poems written by four gay poets of Manila and Singapore. The study is not so much about problematizing the category of ?gay literature? as it is about locating the ways in which sexuality and urban experience inflect the creative process. The thesis begins by theorizing that the spatial productions of Manila and Singapore are horizontalized fragmentation and verticalized compression respectively. In the thesis I demonstrate how this interaction between urban patterns and gay identity is projected into the way these poets utilize the everyday and the domestic to engage spatial experience of difference and desire. The thesis thus argues that the spaces of creative engagement opened up by these poets are informed by a triangular interplay between experiences of space, practices of sexuality and the act of poesis.