Welcome to the world of David Mc-Kirdy who has recently published Accidental Occidental, an anthology detailing his experience of being neither truly British nor Chinese. The Arabic is an incidental pleasure.

On this evening, the Fringe Club is packed with people keen to hear McKirdy perform his work though the self-deprecating poet claims later that most in the audience are personal friends. His writing, though, is colorful and expressive, and fares well in public performance.

Born in Scotland, McKirdy emigrated to Hong Kong with his parents when he was five. Apart from brief visits to the United Kingdom and a five-year stint there in his 20s, he has lived here ever since. He now lives in Sai Kung Country Park with his "partner and muse'' Gauri Narain.

McKirdy's work casts a wry eye over both English and Chinese customs. Throughout the anthology, detailed pictures emerge of his adopted culture with references to Chinese opera, temple ceremonies and the people of the streets.

The poetry (culled from his writing of the past five years) seems a fairly unfiltered narrative of his life - traversing treatment for cancer, current affairs, Chinese culture and religion.

It is sometimes self-consciously confessional, as with Old School Ties, about an old friend brought low.

At other times he is more lyrical as in Butterflies and Dreams.

A man with interests as diverse as drumming and motorbike restoration, he has plenty to draw on.

"The collection is about what I am; it's about cultural dislocation,'' he says.

"I am not confused over my personal identity; it's a national ambiguity. I don't think like a white British guy. I don't know what I feel I am.''

Also bringing to bear his childhood, with its strong sense of Scottish identity, the collection is more an exploration than an answer.

Asked whether his is a dying breed - post-colonial expats reared in two worlds - he retorts tartly: "Hardly dying!''

This is despite repeated depictions of aging friendships in Accidental Occidental. He still has several friends, if not born, then definitely bred here, though many have left to further their educations elsewhere.

Nominally Scottish, his accent is English but he was educated in another culture, another time.

"I went to an English school in the 60s and 70s, with a 30s atmosphere,'' he says.

"Everyone there was taught the same attitudes as me; communities abroad tend to hang on to their traditions longer. There is an inculcated value system. But when I visit London I am ill at ease on the Underground until I hear someone speaking Cantonese.''

The anthology is bookended to express his heritage. McKirdy aims his sense of alienation squarely at the "motherland'' in the opening poem, Abroad in England. Familiar complaints emerge about the "green and pleasant land,'' the bastardization of the language and worship of football. The final poem, Gifted, explores his indebtedness to his parents' choice to move to Hong Kong from Scotland, as well as their artistic inclinations.

He says: "The collection is literally and metaphorically bracketed between these two poems.''

McKirdy left school at 16, to try to become an aircraft engineer. When that didn't work out, he took a variety of jobs including shipping clerk and construction labourer. There was even a stint in Formula One.

"I wasn't very interested in academic things,'' he says.

He spent time as a rock drummer and a champion Hong Kong motocross racer and did not pick up a pen until "eight or nine years ago.''

"I just fell into it,'' he explains. The poetry stemmed from a course at Hong Kong Open University.

Always a voracious reader, his imagination was caught by a philosophy module. One module became two, two became several, until "it made no sense not to get a degree. Getting back into the habit of doing something I hadn't done since school triggered my desire to write. Before that I had no time for literary endeavours; I was pursuing other things.''

McKirdy disagrees with any suggestion that Hong Kong is culturally barren. "Hong Kong is a very cultured place and you can access it readily,'' he says, and he is keen to celebrate the more accessible forms of entertainment.

"For Chinese opera, they assemble the opera house in the car park; it's a real culture of the people. Western culture is more elitist. It's not so much for everyman. In Hong Kong the culture represents a cross-section of society.''

This admiration of egalitarian art is perhaps why he does not count individual poets as influences. He appreciates work from across the canon, including war poet Robert Graves, Wordsworth and Keats.

But Barbra Streisand is also part of the mix. He's not kidding.

"She's one of my favourite music-ians,'' he says. "She's an inspiration. I enjoy creative things done well if [they are] expressed in an elegant, eloquent way. It's the same for a dancer, singer or writer.''

He relishes the idea of Hong Kong as a cultural stew where the tide of different influences advances and recedes continually.

He is a regular convenor and performer at the poetry group OUTLOUD, which he describes as "a loose freemasonry of like-minded people.''

He is also part of a monthly collective called the PLA (Poets' Liberation Army) that has their work read and translated into Arabic by contributor Sayed Goudato because they enjoy the music of the language.

"We loved the sound of it. It was a serendipitous thing,'' he says.

Although personal experience closely informs McKirdy's work, his anthology pays tribute to other art forms including paintings and photographs.

He showed artists his poems and asked for interpretations, however broad, to illustrate them.

"I didn't want to constrain them,'' he says. "I said that if you choose to represent the Elian Gonzales [the Cuban child at the center of a custody battle in the United States a few years ago] poem with a completely green canvas, for example, that's what will represent it. They are a co-operative venture from different disciplines. It made the whole thing much more complex but I'm very glad we did it.''

The anthology was published by business associate Peter Gordon, a fellow committee member of the Hong Kong Literary Festival (and contributor to The Standard), with a grant from the Arts Development Council.

As to the future, McKirdy will share Accidental Occidental with his fellow Outlanders, and a local PR firm will distribute the book to clients at a private reading. After that, it's off to the US for a spot of motorbike repair. But knowing his affinity for his adopted homeland, it's doubtful he'll be away for long.