#SGLit
I am 50 pages in to Kappa Quartet, Daryl Qilin Yam’s debut novel, and enjoying the read immensely. The book was long listed for the Epigram Books Fiction Prize in 2015.
The prose is crisp and elegant with a sense of mystery and intrigue. The same may be said of Daryl himself.
In his spare time Daryl does all the work at Sing Lit Station where I managed to take a few images of him and he kindly signed his book for me.
David Wong & Antoine Cassar were the guest poets at Speakeasy on 28 September at Artistry.
David read from his outstanding debut collection, For the End Comes Reaching, and Antoine read Passaport, printed in the form of an anti-passport.
‘Valid for all peoples, and for all landscapes. For all citizens and villagers of flesh and blood, wherever they were born. Your worth is not proportional to the population of your country. Entry free of duty, no need for a stamp or visa, the doors are unscrewed from the jambs.’
A hat was passed around with proceeds from the evening going to support the important and valuable work of HOME.
HOME provides counselling & advice for migrant workers, runs a shelter, supports migrant workers in disputes with employers, helps with medical issues, provides education & emotional support, and conducts advocacy campaigns & research including an Anti Sex Trafficking Campaign. I have images from a beauty pageant organised by HOME here.
Two recent #SGLit events at Books Actually:
We held a meeting last night gathered around a 24-inch computer screen working our way through the Sing Lit Station draft accounting and financial framework, Petty Cash process, SingPoWriMo T shirt inventory and myriad tasks, activities and projects all organised in colour-coded glory, all one click away within the cloud based workflow software.
B&W photos are above, and colour photos here, starring Ruth Tang, Daryl Qilin Yam, Tse Hao Guang and Joshua Ip.
Meanwhile submit to the Manuscript Boot Camp 2016: Prose from now until 15 September 2016.
Congratulations Cyril & Desmond. Terrific achievement for The Lover's Inventory & I Didn't Know Mani Was a Conceptualist
I’m delighted to be amongst the writers featured in the SWF Pop Up Event Poets Among the Stars which will take place at 5pm on 4 June 2016 in the Omni Theatre at the Science Centre.
It’s free & you can get your tickets on Peatix here.
Eight Singapore poets will each read a poem against the backdrop of the Universe spread out across the huge, domed screen. The star studded* line up includes:
Award winning, Singapore Literature Poetry Prize nominated, multi-talented, ex -journalist and all round inspiration to both young and old.
Award winning, poet and teacher, writer of A Separation and The Law of Second Marriages, and co-editor of A Luxury We Cannot Afford.
Writer, performer, four-time TEDx speaker and force of nature. Deborah’s recently launched creative non fiction book, Rebel Rites, is an account of her year in the Singapore prison system.
Writer, educator and bird watcher, Ann Ang’s collection of short stories, Bang My Car, a Singaporean classic starring the Uncle has recently been reprinted in a beautiful second edition from Math Paper Press.
Award winning poet, translator and educator, Loh Guan Liang has recently launched his 'knock out', second book of poetry, Bitter Punch, published by Ethos Books.
Award winning writer and journalist, Deputy Editor of Berita Harian. A creative force in Singapore since the 90s.
Award winning poet, translator, publicist and educator, her poetry collection, They Hear Salt Crystallising (Firstfruits Publications, 2010) was shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize in 2012.
Come along it’s free!!
*Excluding your humble scribe.
"So we lunched at Lau Pa Sat and talked through the surface of our lives. I told her my glorious pretensions and she smiled back with a charming reticence. I asked her what she was doing working for Mr Tan? Surely she could find something better? She said it’s just a job and she was biding her time while readying her heart and soul for the Universe. I told her I could relate to that. We talked about the dreariness of everyday life, how most things were old cabbage and wet socks. I told her I was getting out, moving to London where I could lose myself. I lectured her on the courage to move away from one’s comfort zone. She smiled at me and suggested Lombok rather than London."
Excerpt from A Long Bicycle Ride Into the Sea, a story in We Rose Up Slowly
You can buy We Rose Up Slowly here (free shipping in Singapore).
A Long Bicycle Ride into the Sea is a story from my collection, We Rose Up Slowly. The story was written in 2011 and published in Coast (Math Paper Press, 2011).
A Long Bicycle Ride into the Sea:
On 30 April, SingPoWriMo 2016 held its Closing Party at BooksActually.
Apparently there were free ice cream sandwiches. I didn't manage to get any (maybe that was by design) but I did manage to find a kind person who gave me a cigarette (thanks Jocelyn).
Joshua Ip has a list of things to do next - including contributing to journals and supporting the 2016 Anthology with a donation.
The index of prolific, posting poets, partcipating is here. This year's 'surprise find' was Poetry on the MRT - coming to a carriage near you very soon.
There is even an ST podcast on SingPoWriMo and poetry with Joshua Ip, Alvin Pang & Deborah Emmanuel.
Images from prior years SingPoWriMos can be found here.
So what's next for SingPoWriMo?
Perhaps next year's SingPoWriMo could go regional and become AseanPoWriMo??
On 1 May 2016, Mhd Mukul launched his debut english poetry collection, Me Migrant, at The Arts House. The book is published by Ethos Books, translated from Bangla with help from Fariha Imran and Farouk Ahammed and transcreated by Cyril Wong, with input on several poems from Marc Nair.
The High Commissioner of Bangladesh launched the book while many - over a hundred, by my reckoning - of Muhammed Mukul’s friends at Healthserve, in the migrant worker and literary communities were in attendance.
“Md Mukul Hossine was born in Patgram, Bangladesh, and has a Bachelor’s degree in Social Sciences. In 2008, he arrived in Singapore and has been working in its construction sector. Mukul writes poems, novels, and short stories. He enjoys composing poetry to remember his mother back home. His novel, Buker Simanaye Sukh (Happiness at Heart’s Edge) and his poetry collection Apurna Vasana (Unfulfilled Desire) have been published in Bangladesh. His other works have also appeared in anthologies. Mukul has spent many long nights writing poetry. His favourite poet is Rabindranath Tagore.” - Ethos Books
Md Mukul and his book are currently receiving a lot of attention in the Singapore media. This focus is a welcome change from the othering and simplistic political dialogue surrounding migrant workers. The media gaze and ‘celebrity’ opportunities should not sanitise, absolve and/or distract from the need to recognise:
Don't just buy Md Mukul's book, please support those on the ground providing much needed help to, and recommendations benefitting, migrant workers such as Healthserve, TWC2 & HOME.
Images from other SGLit Migrant Worker Poetry events
Images from the HOME Showtime Pageant
Written Country: The History of Singapore through Literature was launched at Kinokuniya last Saturday. The book is published by Landmark Books and edited by Gwee Li Sui.
This anthology tells Singapore’s history through excerpts of prose and poetry. A brief informative commentary on key events from the fall of Singapore to the death of Lee Kuan Yew accompanies the literary texts.
Gwee’s introduction sets out the editorial principles guiding his approach to the selection and arrangement of the texts. I like Gwee’s discussion of:
What is the quality that literature possesses that makes history come alive and something more than a list of observed facts and descriptions?
In the very first text, Lim Thean Soo demonstrates this quality when he writes about the schoolboy who runs to the concrete roof of his family home to watch the shelling and counter shelling, and the bombs falling across Singapore on the 15th February 1942.
Gwee notes, inter alia, writers form characters that possess ’some quality of having lived through time’ and possessing deeper forms of knowledge by ‘allowing information to be thought back to us - accordingly rethought, made meaningful.’
Gwee writes ‘[a]s ... texts enter specific moments, they effectively give back to events their emotions and, in this way, generate reflections and commentaries from within.’
At the Kino launch:
The book also contains prose excerpts and poems from Alfian Sa’at, Robert Yeo, Said Zahari, Goh Sin Tub, Dave Chua, Christine Chia, Gopal Baratham, Stella Kon, Boey Kim Cheng, Felix Cheong, Toh Hsien Minh, Tania De Rozario and others.
The book is a gateway drug encouraging the consumption of other works of leading Singapore writers.
Landmark’s founder, Goh Eck Kheng, did not expect Gwee to do so much work editing the book. Gwee probably did not expect to do so much work either. He ended up looking at a ‘couple of thousand Singaporean English titles’ and whittled that down to 54 pieces. Gwee’s expression after the suggestion of another volume of literature covering pre-war events can be seen above.
My only other question is where was the kachang puteh and potong ice cream?
Rizam Arsad, Energia Fitness, Riverside Point, Singapore 2009
"He remembered when he was a child, maybe about nine years old, massaging his mother’s feet. Pressing his little thumbs into her rough, calloused flesh as hard as he could. Feeling the warmth and softness beneath the dry, crackled skin and trying to smooth out all her tension and worry. When did the quiet comfort in each other’s company disappear? He loved his mother. Very much. It was just that she loved his brother more."
Excerpt from Rashid at The Sail, a story in my book, We Rose Up Slowly
In this story a young man, kicked out of home by his mother, retreats to his brother’s luxury condominium at The Sail to work out what to do with his life.
The story was written in 2014 and 2015 and was inspired by:
Rashid at the Sail:
In some ways this is an anti-Merlion story. The Merlion (that consumer staple of Sing Lit) means nothing to our protagonist whose inspiration is gained from another SingLit icon: a kite, representing the independence and agency of individuals rather than a contrived, 'marketing driven solution'. See Dave Chua's, The Beating & Other Stories, for a story with a Kite in it.
There are also references in this story to:
NTU’s Creative Writing Faculty held a reading on 7 April at Artistry featuring several writers in residence: Tash Aw (Taiwan/Malaysia/UK), Divya Victor (Singapore/India/US) and Boey Kim Cheng (Australia/Singapore).
Tash read from his new nonfiction book, Strangers on a Pier, and entertained with tales of bourgeois gangsters and ‘bodice ripper’ reading teachers.
I like the emphasis in his essay on ‘routes’, rather than some fundamental ’root’ at the core of identity. See Stuart Hall.
I will write more about Strangers on a Pier and it’s themes of nostalgia, the frame of narrative and story technique in migrant tales, mixed identities and imposter syndrome in a later post. These thoughts will be written from the perspective of a reluctant ex Yuppie, Eurasian with an adopted and adopting, hybrid identity.
Divya read a selection of her poetry, prose poems and essays including pieces from her forthcoming book, KITH and a prose poem about the Tamil child suicide bomber who assassinated Rajiv Gandhi.
Boey Kim Cheng read The Golden Temple and a stamp poem (after forgetting where he’d put it).
The common theme reflected in the readings and their readers seemed to be the entanglement of national and cultural identities - or perhaps I was reading this into things.
Meanwhile, despite it being obvious to the point of banality that any one individual can have many identities, influences and stories, lately, political and privileged classes have ramped up discourses of bigotry and racism so anything reflecting the complexity of lived experience (we are many not one) should be celebrated.
Examples of discourses of ‘othering’ include:
Where is this racism, xenophobia and prejudice coming from? Punching down and a distraction from anxieties felt by the mainstream over the decline in opportunity and privilege? Another topic to be discussed in a later post.
Anyway back to the wonderful evening which may be summarised as follows:
the sandwiches were decent, and the satays and readings were better.
