A teenager at two years old

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Walt Whitman, excerpt from Songs of Myself from Leaves of Grass

Clarissa's Rainbird's launch

On 10 March 2018 the Singapore edition of Clarissa Goenawan's Rainbirds was launched at The Arts House by Math Paper Press.

Clarissa was a member of Writing the City and will be appearing on 21 July 2018 at Writing the City at Sing Lit Station at 3A Jalan Kubor. I hope to see you there - where I will be talking with Clarissa about querying agents and the publishing process. 

For more details about Writing the City we have a Facebook page here that you can join

Shanghai

Images from a trip to Shanghai in 2004.

Goodby Speakeasy & Artistry

Goodbye Artistry and goodbye Speakeasy. It feels like the end of an era as Speakeasy and Artistry finish up in March 2018 at Speakeasy: One Last Dance. A large amount of gratitude to Pooja and Prashant for their courage and vision in running Speakeasy at Artistry over the years. Hopefully, the start of something as wonderful as Speakeasy will happen again soon.

Here are some of the highlights I managed to witness:

Speakeasy #16 George Szirtes & Ng Yi Sheng

Speakeasy #17 Banglar Migrant Worker Poets

Speakeasy #18 Valentine’s Edition 2015

Speakeasy #19 Deborah Emmanuel

Speakeasy #25 Valentine’s Edition 2016

Speakeasy #28 Antoine Cassar & David Wong

Speakeasy #29 Tania De Rozario, Alfian Sa'at & Cyril Wong

Speakeasy #30 Valentine’s Edition 2017

Speakeasy #31 Yong Shu Hoong & Will Beale

All images are copyright Jon Gresham. All rights reserved.

Prior permission is required for approval to use any image - please email me at jongresh [at] yahoo.com. Attribution after written authorisation should be ‘Copyright Jon Gresham. All rights reserved. www.igloomelts.com'.

Kid, Singapore

“Statistics show that states with stricter gun laws and fewer guns have less overall gun violence than those with more lax laws and more guns. Hemenway, who has done extensive research on guns, said it boils down to access to weapons.”

Sing Lit Station 2017

Sing Lit Station is a literary community and registered charity based in Singapore. We're really proud of what we achieved in 2017.

In 2017 we helped bring readers and writers together running over 40 free creative writing poetry and prose workshops with migrant workers, dedicated poets and writers, with members of the public at Toa Payoh Library and The Arts House, and with writers when we ran prose & poetry manuscript bootcamps at our office in Jalan Kubor.

We also ran poetry and prose workshops with some of Singapore's finest writers & educators in over 15 secondary schools in Singapore, reaching over 1,600 students and selling over 100 books of Singapore literature. 

We ran a translation retreat with Literature Across Frontiers in Malaysia, CampLit - a creative writing holiday program for students, and Sing Lit Body Slam with GrappleMax Dojo combining poetry & professional wrestling. We launched a new prize to promote South East Asian poetry, The Hawker Prize. And we continue to run the things we usually do like SingPoWriMo and poetry.sg.

But we need your help so we can continue to support your Singapore literary community: PLEASE DONATE HERE. We can't continue to do the things we do unless we have your generous support.

And do let us know your thoughts on how we can improve and what you'd like to see in the future at Sing Lit Station.