Singapore
Filtering by Category: Poems
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Read MorePoems, Loh Guan Liang
Maria S. Mendes
My Chinese teacher once taught me
that pursuit starts with a dot breaking
the surface, then an upward slash
to the right; the sail must be erect
before the remaining strokes can appear,
junk-shaped, to chase white waters.
When she wrapped my hand in hers I saw
only unyielding sequence in penmanship,
how my pen could only write my life
forwards, not backwards. Now older,
pursuit looks more like a butterfly
searching for its other wing – what
my Chinese teacher did not say
is that we also finish each sentence
with a dot, except that it winds back
to itself, the point of departure
almost touching the point of return。
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Poems, Pooja Nansi
Sara Carvalho
Pooja Nansi is a first-generation Singaporean. With two books published, her poems show the influence of “Old Bollywood songs, my family and Rap music”. Pooja Nansi’s poetry reveals the melancholia of exile, visible in her songs of parting ‘A line that says “After renunciation, you will be given a letter stating that your Indian passport has been cancelled and that you are no longer an Indian citizen”’. Her poems are also playful and make fun of pop culture, movie theatres, the idea of loving somebody and loosing oneself in somebody else’s dream. For this issue, Pooja Nansi allowed us to publish ‘Songs of Exile,’ ‘Amitabh Bachan’ and ‘Geeta Cinema’.
Read MorePoems, Shirley Geok-lin Lim
Sara Carvalho
Do you live in Singapore?
(With thanks to Wendy Cope)
Can someone make my mother’s wish come true?
Transnational CEO with private plane,
do you live in Singapore? Is it you?
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Poems, Tania de Rozario
Maria S. Mendes
I want to write you a poem that unravels
from the gut, hurls itself towards you
like a slap across the mouth. Let my words
unleash themselves upon you like dogs
looking for a fight, like seeds bursting
from overripe pods. Let every vowel
explode in your face like cruel laughter,
every consonant pronounce itself
like death into your ear, every comma
trip up your speech, every full-stop
prevent you from finding your way
home. I hope you were not expecting (…)
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Poems, Yeng Pway Ngon
Sara Carvalho
While at Singapore, we had a wonderful time interviewing Yeng Pway Ngon, an inexhaustible author, who published 26 volumes of poetry, fiction, essays, plays and literary criticism. We spoke about Yeng Pway Ngon’s talent to write across genres, his first award, the reasons why he has chosen to publish in Taiwan, the imagery in his poems and why truthfulness is important. Yeng Pway Ngon also gave us permission to publish two poems from his Collected Poems’ collection, ‘Café’ and ‘Missing’.
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