SAVAGE CHARM is autobiographical at its core, yet unsentimental, unapologetic, and rigorous in its exploration of related concepts such as self-knowledge, fictional identity, the city, the writing of exile, belief, religion, and the modern subject. The poet brings his distinctive voice to cosmopolitan Hong Kong’s English poetic scene with this volume which records his personal experience of the city in the subtlest of ways. Though highly personal, the poems have a gutsy impersonal touch and a distinctive social tinge. Savage charm: a first poetry collection is beautifully poetic and deeply philosophical at the same time.