Sarah and Schooling, the Graphic Designers

Charmaine Yeo, Ruth Schooling, Sarah Tang, me in the glasses, Kenny Zeng and Alison Schooling & cat at Sarah and Schooling, Jalan Pisang, Singapore, June 2015.

Last week at Sarah and Schooling’s office on Jalan Pisang I spent a couple of hours going through the final proofs of my book, We Rose Up Slowly.  

I discovered one minor error: a pair of missing quotation marks at the end of an indented paragraph, and that was it. No more revisions, edits or changes.

The book was sent to the printers the next day with another 9 titles - including new poetry from Cyril Wong, reprints of From the Belly of the Cat & Balik Kampung - which Math Paper Press will also publish in early July.

Sarah and Schooling, as always, have done a wonderful job on these books.

I am very happy with their cover design of We Rose Up Slowly. After many false starts with external content providers, the talented Kenny Zeng of Sarah and Schooling came up with the goods and showed Math Paper Press and I several of his ideas for the final cover. We were all unanimous in choosing the final cover above.

Kenny Z’s cover is ethereal, enigmatic and quirky. There is a reason for the cow floating above the clouds on the back cover. His design illuminates the sensibility of the text and invites readers into a world of possibility, romance and beauty.

Thanks and good luck to Kenny Z - who is off to New York to study in a couple of months.

You can buy We Rose Up Slowly here (free delivery in Singapore!).

HOME Showtime Pageant Rehearsal & HOME Academy

It's incredible what foreign domestic workers get up to on their days off:

On 14 June 2015 I had the pleasure of attending a rehearsal of the HOME Showtime Talent Pageant at Chinese International School. Here is a report on last year's show. Filipino, Indonesian and Indian domestic workers were having a wonderful time practising their moves, dancing, posing and taking selfies. The final will be held on 28 June 2015.

At the same time the HOME Academy were holding a Caregiver Course and Advanced Baking Course for domestic workers. The quality of the cakes and bread produced by the baking course participants was outstanding. These Courses are held on a 6 monthly basis and intakes take place in January and July each year. Sign Up now!

Advanced Baking HOME Academy

Advanced Baking HOME Academy

Advanced Baking HOME Academy

Advanced Baking HOME Academy

Advanced Baking HOME Academy

Advanced Baking HOME Academy

Advanced Baking HOME Academy

Advanced Baking HOME Academy

Janet Bullecer, teacher at Advanced Baking HOME Academy

Flordeliza Duran, Michelle Ledesma, Jane Supapo, Juliana Quel & Suwartiningsih of HOME Academy Caregiver's Course

Jetky, Mayladin Almoguera & Mercy of HOME Academy Cooking Course

Pink Dot

One of the most eloquent expressions of the need for Pink Dot can be found at the Chiongs blog:

"I believe change is coming and it is coming now. We are here, we are queer and we are not going to be swept under the carpet any longer. More people need to understand about the LGBTQ community and the only way this will happen is through interaction and education. The more people meet, know and care about someone who is LGBTQ, the less likely they will continue to discriminate and bully them. When everyone in Singapore knows someone who is LGBTQ, we won’t need to have Pink Dot anymore.

So we will continue to brave the crowds, heat and humidity to meet more people at Pink Dot tomorrow. If you are still sitting on the fence on whether or not you should attend, please do come join us."

Singapore has so many openly LGBTQ businesses, cafes, clubs, bars & entertainment venues, employees, employers, executives, public servants, journalists, bloggers and politicians (aka people) ... and yet s377A exists ... and there is discrimination and a fear of an agenda that holds back progress, tolerance and fairness.

Agree to disagree by all means, but don't deny others the rights and freedoms that you have (& possibly may take for granted).

Jakarta & Philip Larkin

Nearly there. Just a weekend to go. Then everything changes, or so we are told. Best listen to some Larkin then to cool our savage nerves & salve our anticipation.

The Trees 

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too.
Their yearly trick of looking new 
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

by Phillip Larkin

The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye launch at Kinokuniya

The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye was launched yesterday at Kinokuniya by Sonny Liew.

Recent controversy does not seem to have dampened enthusiasm for the book - Kinokuniya’s main store sold out. The fact Sonny is a Liverpool FC supporter also should not distract from how wonderful and important this book is for Singapore and comics. 

I’m half way through the book. I'll finish it by the end of the day. I think the design and art work are beautiful … and it’s funny. A great deal of research, craft, intelligence and talent has gone into the book. I’d put it up there with Joe Sacco, Art Spiegelman, Harvey Pekar etc as an example of how documentary graphic stories/comics shift perspectives and make you think in new ways.

I grew up on Beano, Mad magazine and Commando comics (I used to look like Dennis the Menace). So I love the range of graphic styles displayed in the book. These diverse styles and influences reflect the history of comics and the theme of exploring multiple narratives, and highlight the need to tell stories at a personal level beyond the dominant orthodoxy.

There is an in depth interview by Paul Gravett with Sonny here.

Speaking of the past and visual stories, here are links to images from March 2015 following the death of Lee Kuan Yew: 

• Vigil
• Tribute
• After
• Cortege

Burn After Reading with Cyril Wong

Burn After Reading SG, a Singapore collective of young writers, presented a poetry evening with Cyril Wong at Artistry on 22 May 2015.

Cyril shared several of his poems (including one of my favourites First Date) and answered questions. 

Cyril was in good form and talked about growing up on the concrete floor of a small HDB flat, the music in his poetry, darkness, getting to know Terry Jaensch, why he likes the Australian poetry scene, his ‘process’ (handphone note taking and sending SMSs to the self, collecting these wisps in a laptop each evening and letting the work grow from there) etc etc.

Then Cyril sang a Chinese lullaby and we were taken to a completely different space.

No wonder people were turned away at the door.

The next BAR SG event is on 27 July 2015.

Lady in Chinatown & Walden

‘I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.’

Henry David Thoreau, Walden

I never read Walden. I should have. I realise that now.

Best get to it then.

Speakeasy #19: Deborah Emmanuel

On 29 April 2015 at Artistry, Speakeasy #19 hosted Singaporean writer, musician and actor, Deborah Emmanuel. 

Fresh from Bali - it was almost as though she’d just caught a taxi from the airport after a budget flight from Denpasar, Deborah read poems from her iPhone and new collection, When I Giggle In My Sleep (Red Wheelbarrow Books).

When she read Hey, Mr Pickpocket Man it reminded me how I have never understood the attraction of ’Schoolies week’.

The herd mentality, the myth of slobber and intoxication as grand ‘coming of age’ ritual. Could these really be the best days of our lives? Now we are grown up, and get drunk, and steal, and shag, and throw our bodies all over the place, until we are spent, and fall asleep on the sand with each other’s vomit as a pillow.

Frankly, I’d rather have been sitting on a rock on a hillside, reading Flannery O’Connor and listening to The Waterboys while sneaking a tipple from a stolen Single Malt. That was a long time ago.

Anyway, I enjoyed the energy and wit of her poetry, especially the beauty and thoughtfulness of her sadder work.

Mother & Child, Bangkok

COMING SOON from Math Paper Press:

‘The phenomenon began with birds flying higher and things falling slower. Now the phenomenon is everywhere and it has changed the way we touch each other. Once one evening, after you’d finished your ice cream, I came close to you and we took our clothes off. Socks floating around the room.’

In these stories worlds fall apart and everyone is looking for an escape. 

Exploring possibility and desire, yearning and identity in Singapore, Australia and Jakarta, We Rose Up Slowly is the debut collection of short stories by Jon Gresham.