Forward
On the 22nd of January earlier this year, a rather peculiar Facebook Messenger group was created by the good people behind Sing Lit Station, the driving force behind the annual Singapore Poetry Writing Month (also known as SingPoWriMo, SPWM, spwm, April is the cruelest month, etc, etc).
Invited into the group were some of SingPoWriMo’s biggest supporters, its most devoted participants, along with some of the most ardent volunteers helping to run what has become the Singapore literary scene’s largest annual online event. Senior moderators, junior moderators, past moderators, veterans and senior members of the writing community were asked for their input, thoughts and possible solutions. Words were typed. Emojis were exchanged. Polls were tabulated.
It was all low-key dramatic.
The main topic of discussion?
“spwm sales are shit”
“spwm” in this case referred to the SingPoWriMo Anthology published every year, a collection of some of the most interesting works produced in those 30 days of delirium. Essentially, the costs of printing a new book every year to anthologise the best of SingPoWriMo have finally lost what is known in common parlance as “business sense”.
The reasons for lagging sales were varied and multifaceted. Without more research to back them up, most of the reasons being suggested can still be safely categorized under the genre “speculative fiction”. However, what data we did have—mainly in the form of sales records—simply boiled down to this: fewer and fewer people are buying SPWM Anthologies.
As a group, SingPoWriMo is actually the largest it has ever been, with 5,867 members in the beginning of April to witness this year’s first prompt and 6,092 people to witness the last prompt on the last day. As of August 2019, the group only needs 5 more members to hit 6, 200.
Theoretically, this should have translated into increased sales, fame for participating poets, and fortune for our publishers.
Alas, it did not.
From the qualitative feedback we gathered within that now rather silent Facebook Messenger group, we identified a few possible points that resonated across readers of various backgrounds and interests, threads that we were able to stitch together into three main reasons for declining sales:
SPWM Anthologies are becoming too thick and, therefore, very time-consuming to read, to the extent that many buyers of past editions would not be able to finish them before the next one is out.
People who would otherwise be the target buyers (budding poets, avid readers, poetry-lovers) are often participants who are content with their complimentary copies. Or borrowing complimentary copies. Or borrowing them from the public libraries.
Beyond fulfilling the basic functions of anthologies, SPWM books did not offer any further value for readers. It basically relies entirely on the collected poems to inform, engage, and entertain. Poems that have already been read, liked, and, in some cases, shared.
So we decided to conceptualise something that would be able to somehow address, at the very least, the three problems identified:
Instead of publishing over a hundred poems in one ever-thickening physical volume every year, it made sense to publish the best of the best poems from SPWM 2019 in an online digital magazine format. This would eliminate printing costs.
Then we decided to divide the shortlisted poems to publish them in three different issues, loosely curated according to three different themes. This would make it much more digestible for our readers and allow these poems to stand on their own as individual pieces of work, each with their own ideas, themes, social commentaries, and literary value.
In addition to that, we also decided to include within each issue a variety of articles and features from our volunteers and contributors. This means that you get to read much more than just poems you might have already read during SPWM itself.
And all these things nicely wrapped up in an inoffensive design, one that may even please your aesthetic, and that is also mobile-friendly!
Yay!
We are therefore proud to present this inaugural issue of SPWM Magazine:
“The Lines We Navigate”
In this first issue, we look at the lines that define our identities, that limit, lines that we write, that we draw, and that we cross every day, be they geographical borders, the identities we claim or are re-claiming, be they traditions, ways of doing, of framing, of thinking. We look at the ways we also choose to present these lines as strings upon strings of words and letters and meaning.
What are the parts of ourselves that we hold on to when we find ourselves somewhere far from home? What are the parts we excise or reconfigure? What are the parts we let bloom? How?
Why?
These were just some of the thoughts that we gleaned from the 14 poems featured, poems that, through our informed but ultimately still-limited perspectives, we thought deserved to be re-read and shared.
In addition to these outstanding poems, please enjoy the features our humble pool of volunteers have prepared for this issue, such as our How-To listicle for those in need of tips to review their own poems, as well as our coverage of Sing Lit Body Slam, our most violent literary event to date (physically, anyway).
Included are also interviews with poet Rodrigo Dela Peña, Jr. and playwright Nabilah Said, both of whom have important perspectives to share on writing and who have both contributed their fair share of poems to SPWM over the years.
With all these small but hopefully engaging additions, we the editors hope that SPWM Magazine will take SingPoWriMo and the effervescent community supporting it towards the future, so that no matter the boundaries we have to cross, no matter the obstacles we have to negotiate, the lines we have to navigate or navigate with, we are, at the very least, together moving forward.
/ The first five years of Singapore Poetry Writing Month resulted in print anthologies released in November. We aim to break the mold this year. SingPoWriMo 2019 takes the form of an online magazine with three issues published between Sep 2019 and Mar 2020, containing a mix of poems and special features.
Issue ① , themed “The Lines We Navigate”, contains the following poems:
“No Port, No Harbour” by Faith Christine Lai
“My Country is a Criminal” by Ianna Chia
“Migrant” by Janice Heng
“Permanent Resident” by Jocelyn Suarez
“Building and Construction Authority” by John Paul Tan
“We Would Have Always Been Someone’s Bitch” by Kok Wei Liang
“Queer Resistance from a Buried Kampung” by Lune Loh
“when i said i was a time traveller, i meant / i have seen my future with you” by Qamar Firdaus Saini
“Hougang Green” by Rocco Hu
“The Trick Is It Gets Easier” by Samuel Caleb Wee
“Micky Mouse, on Dropping a Bomb Over the Enemies of America in the Thick of WWII” by Valen Lim
“In America My Hair is Falling Out in the Shower” by Wahid Al Mamun
“What We Mean When We Call It A Riot”, Wahid Al Mamun
“At the Corner of JFK”, Yong Han Poh