2022.4 / Issue ⑩ 2022.3 / Issue ⑩ 2022.2 / Issue ⑩ 2022.1 / Issue ⑩ 2021.3 / Issue ⑨ 2021.2 / Issue ⑧ 2021.1 / Issue ⑦ 2020.3 / Issue ⑥ 2020.2 / Issue ⑤ 2020.1 / Issue ④ 2019.3 / Issue ③ 2019.2 / Issue ② 2019.1 / Issue ①

/ Issue ⑩

We’re counting down to #SPWM23 with a spotlight on the poems we loved last year.

From now till end Mar 2023, Issue ⑩ will be scattering its seeds over a 10-week period in the hope that it takes root and gives rise to moments of inspiration. Rather than appoint an editorial team to curate the best of Singapore Poetry Writing Month 2022, SingPoWriMo.com will be publishing poems personally handpicked by our stable of #SPWM22 senior moderators. As always: poetry is coming.

Poetry selections, interviews and commentary
by Ang Shuang, Jennifer Anne Champion, Tse Hao Guang, Ng Yi-Sheng & Stephanie Dogfoot

/ STEPHANIE DOGFOOT

(also known as Stephanie Chan) lives in Singapore and has been writing poetry ever since her first gerbil died when she was 11. The author of Roadkill for Beginners, a poetry collection published by Math Paper Press, she is both a Singapore (2010) and UK Slam (2012) champion and has represented both countries in international poetry slams. Her work has been featured at the Melbourne Spoken Word Festival, the George Town Literary Festival, Ubud Writers and Readers Festival, Glastonbury Festival and many others. She has toured Germany, Australia, Southeast Asia and North America with her poetry. She currently curates and hosts a monthly poetry night called Spoke & Bird which features local and international poets.

Features
"after Bak died", Al Hafiz Sanusi

Weeks after Bak died
nobody dared to touch his things
his one black songkok tucked in
the corner of the brown gerobok
his sarongs remain folded
crisp from corner to corner
his white checkered shirt
another checkered shirt
another checkered shirt

"March of the Mushroom Corals", Jack Xi

We move with the sun, and the sun has been drifting.
These days light is further away and comes wrong—
meltwater dims every depth and the slick
of oil and ballast mars waves into mirrors.
Every night, something glares. It isn't the moon.

"Soil Our Saviour", Cheyenne Alexandria Phillips

There is nowhere else to go
but down to the earth where
we often bury secrets and loved ones.

Dig me out, dig me in
blanket our problems with dirt

"Self Portrait as a Shadow", Conan Tan

CW: self-harm, suicide, depression and homophobic slurs

In another dream just like this one, you belonged to me. You, and that tide pool reflection. That's how things were before everything hemorrhaged as the ocean. Summer of ’99 when the morning had set sail and I was sissy with a conch shell. That’s what they called me then.

"Death Penalty for Cutie", Lune Loh

CW: death, misogyny, drugs, bodily harm, sexual + domestic violence

Solidarity on Facebook? Apparently, people get together to rehearse the scientific truth of Law and Order. Death to criminals, to the disenfranchised, to the margins. I felt, I thought, I wished: how nice it would be to be able to relate to someone, but I cannot touch another's hand while they find safety in being faceless, safety via misreading the violence done to all of us.

/ Ng Yi-SHENG

is a writer, researcher & activist from Singapore. His most recent works include the short story collection Lion City (2018), a co-winner of the 2020 Singapore Literature Prize, and EXHALE: an Anthology of Queer Singapore Voices (2021), co-edited with Stephanie Chan, Andy Ang, Ang Jin Yong, Tan Boon Hui, Atifa Othman & Kokila Annamalai.

“When you're devising prompts as a senior moderator, you feel a sense of power—what devilish new tasks shall I set my poor underlings to do today? But reading the responses cuts you down to size: the SPWM community always knows how to surprise you by taking your stimuli in unexpected, and unexpectedly sublime, directions.

Yong Shu Hoong's ‘Chris’ is a prime example. I created the X'Ho Prompt to remind a younger generation of writers that there were punk voices in Singapore long before them, namely in the figure of X'Ho, DJ and subversive queer writer, who passed on 27 September 2021 at the age of ‘forever 27’. I didn't foresee that a poet older than me, one intimately acquainted with my subject, would pen a far more personal and moving obituary than I ever could.”

Features
"santa semana", Jonathan Chan

take care of your books,
they catch the dust of your whimpers.

God is a cliché,
paring one soul and another.

someone says a rhyme is sublime,
they play tennis without a net.

"Downward Spiral", Kok Wei Liang

CW: Bestiality

Out for a fuck
With a duck
Bad luck on the corkscrew cock

"Post Colonial Fairy Gossip", Elizabeth L Fong

After American Gods

This is the one where Titania actually visits a divorce lawyer after months of swanning around Bukit Timah, complaining about Oberon’s new lang suir mistress who gave him chlamydia.

"World of all Worlds", Don Shiau

Bored of the laser wars,
we throw on our silversuits,
hotwire a spacehawk,
and steal into the next system.
Starfields streak past our bodies;
a dance of celestial rain.
No-one knows. We’ll be back
before roll call.

/ TSE HAO GUANG

is the author of The International Left-Hand Calligraphy Association (Tinfish Press, 2023) and Deeds of Light (Math Paper Press, 2015). He edited the new edition of Wong May’s A Bad Girl’s Book of Animals (Ethos Books, 2023), the anthologies Food Republic (Landmark Books, 2021) and UnFree Verse (Ethos Books, 2017), and the e-journal OF ZOOS. His poems appear in Poetry, Poem-a-Day, Dreginald, New Delta Review, Big Other, and elsewhere. www.tsehaoguang.com.

“Picking these poems has been an exercise in unfairness. I say this because my prompts were intended to (re)focus attention to the process of writing, which I felt would be most useful for a large, years-long writing group. Perhaps with the right nudges and prompts, we might be able to break out of our cynicism and find a way to re-engage with the mystery of writing. To single these few poems out feels like a betrayal of that instinct! Please take my picks in that spirit. Entire prompts go unrepresented, while others are represented by multiple poems. There are quiet epiphanies that some of us must have experienced that did not translate into a product. I’ll try to fail better next time.”

Features
"Cancellation Births The Poem: The Act of Slicing Twisted Thoughts Become The Winding Slits That Gently Open Up to Familiar Moments of Suspended Awe", Amanda Yeo

neck             straining                                        my vision morphs

underside of a snow globe                                  I taste             how

familiar it feels again

"Every Poem I Have Written Comes Back to This Poem", Wahid Al Mamun

As if I used to hold the shape of water. A natural body
holds its joy in its container. This was my innocence.
This, too, was its loss. As if a poem can always be
the pliable body you want it to be. I inhale deeply,
And in the infinite stretch between air and exhalation,
I am pierced by a hundred microplastic images,
a hundred synthetic insertions.

"S", David Wong Hsien Ming

the one who became getai
or stagehand or stage for a family —
what was in the bun, in sparse distribution,
not worth the price of its plastic housing?
I am in line for one thing that leads to the next & away from
the sigh that sloughs off the edge of a bubble
— what was it you said in the shower that the rain repeated
because I am a poor listener?

"Term 2, Day 1", Jerome Lim

Highlighter-green buses. Traffic lights casually 
humming the melody of asphalt mornings. 
Under each bus-stop roof, rays sweep thousands 
of yawning faces with schoolbags packed like 
dumplings: calculators, chromebooks & for many 
the shame of undone homework.

/ JENNIFER ANNE CHAMPION

has published two collections of poetry and has been featured in numerous anthologies in Singapore and abroad. She is a co-founder of poetry.sg and served as its multimedia editor. Currently, Jennifer’s practice is grounded in slow crafts and mindfulness. She was a digital writer-in-residence with the National Centre for Writing (UK) for her work in poetry and textiles. Her poetry and textile works have also been on display with Art Outreach Singapore and NUS EMCC.

Features
"The Lost Art of Flirting", Max Pasakorn

In the restaurant, the waiter still thinks
we are friends. I read the menu in its
arrogant cursive, remember the letters
I’ve received from you — each little alphabet
curled valiantly, the confident brushstrokes
of an artist seasoned with age.

"to absolve myself of all", Brandon Choo

things past, acknowledge that
back then, tense tends to fluctuate
to subvert weight. depends, whether i’m
in sense or in tents. fast forward, found myself
in tens. writing group, some extracts, pens,
changing lens just as things commence.

"The Wrong Kind of Attention", David Kellogg

CW: mention of death

So my aunt died, and that same day I walked
Down the street and back, from house to house,
Telling the news to strangers on my block,
Pretending I had something to disclose,
A child with a secret, although that secret was
Secret only to me

"At Some Point In Life My Favourite Author Was Haruki Murakami", Pamela Seong Koon

a beach mourns the sand stuck in the front of my shoes.
i don't remember this.
at a diner i flinch at the likeness of your name.
just one letter off. i look for this letter in my shoes.
outside, a man cups his hands in front of his face and kisses the window.

"I Wish You Luck", Andrew Kirkrose Devadason

for your audition. for your exam. for getting
your hands on breakfast. for learning three languages
long since dead. for clinching that scholarship.
for navigating your new campus. for navigating
capitalism. for navigating academic email chains.
for receiving timely replies.

/ Ang Shuang

is the author of the poetry collection How to Live With Yourself (Math Paper Press, 2022). A Best of the Net nominee, Shuang holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Her work has been seen in The Rumpus, Wildness and various SingPoWriMo publications.

Features
"atelophobia", Jonathan Chan

that was the year he started
walking in fear, feeling shame
lodged like a plank, or a pickaxe,
conspicuous, clumped in the
brain, the weight of God in
the arched two backs of sacred
and profane.

"Alive", Gerline Lim

Here growls the trespasser,
unbolting himself from the gate of his crowd,
a Usain from start to finish,

a feast waiting for dark spell working.
Time for little flashbacks,
spring rain outside, the cuddles in bed,

sleep-ins, her tiny hand around his finger.

"I'm Driving To Sembawang With My Dog", Elizabeth L Fong

And there is nobody on the roads; nobody out – I thought that everyone would be fleeing to Malaysia, but I guess that everyone who did is already there, and everyone who hasn’t would rather die than go to Malaysia. Maybe the world has already ended in Malaysia.

"Grief Is", Conan Tan

tomorrow is tomorrow until they haul you
into the furnace. legs first, then the bones, then

all the eulogies that follow. pa, i am nineteen
years too young for this: the herbal chicken soup

spilling out of the pot.