SingPoWriMo 2020 - I finished 30/30 poems for the first time ever. The list is up here along with self-inserted comments on whether or not I should revisit the poem.

I’m also incredibly honoured to have been contacted back in April by Justin Lacour, the editor for Trampoline Magazine, to submit some poems. I read through Issue 1 and was really floored by the poems there and of course happily submitted some of my own. A couple of them were admitted to Issue 2 (Look for 2.3). They’re currently on the front page of the site but will be moved when the next set of poems are featured.

My book was also featured recently on the Sing Lit Station’s #StayHomeStayLit2020 campaign. SLS is doing this wonderful feature linking up photographers and artists with a local literature book that they enjoy. I was fortunate enough that the very talented photographer Li Wanjie (@uuanjie) took interest in my book and created this beautiful image inspired by it. I had come across some of his photos years ago and was really taken by the surreal fey quality in them, and am really glad that we’ve gotten to meet this way.

I am trying still to write regularly. There is so much going on now, and even though I am barely leaving the house stillness feels impossible. How does one begin to make sense of everything happening now, let alone attempt to write something profound about it?

I’ve gotten something like three messages in the last two days to say that I've made it in life because my picture has been spotted in an IG ad but for some reason no one thought to save the link to pass to me! After a lot of scrolling on the Public Libraries Singapore Facebook page, I finally found said interview article about being the editor for the Singapore Poetry Writing Magazine, which I had completely forgotten I had done.

Interview here

As always, it is April, which is National Poetry Writing Month, and I’ve put aside my writing project (cough a novel-length Pokemon fanfic) to attempt to churn out a poem a day. I’ve also gotten 15/17 so far - so not too bad a backlog so far. It’s also really interesting to track how I’ve gone from writing a lot of breakup poems, and now I’m just writing a lot of horror and of course, COVID-19 related poems. I’ll put up a list of all my previous

SingPoWriMo Facebook

SingPoWriMo Instagram

On another note prose poem of mine has also been published in Of Zoo’s rolling issue, ‘T O G E T H E R A P A R T’. There’s an open call for poetry during this strange/bizarre/frightening period. I ended up writing something about being haunted. It’s my first publication for a while, because I really didn’t write or submit much last year, but given the weekly updates on Archive of Our Own, small poems I did not hate before SingPoWriMo started this year, 2020 will hopefully be a much more productive year.

You can read ‘Why Are You Haunted?’ here.

Event page here

Happy International Woman’s Day everyone! I have spent most of it hibernating.

I have also been terribly remiss about plugging this (apart from an Instagram post a few weeks back) but arts producer FD basically read my book, liked it enough to ping me on my old site, met me up for tea and then told me she wanted to do a dance production based on my writing. For International Woman’s Day. Of course I gave all my blessings and you can catch the show this weekend! Tickets can be bought here and they’re also stocking my book at $10 (basically cost price).

You can also read up more on the process behind the performance in this Straits Times article. I’ll be catching the closing performance on Sunday and am so excited to see this in the flesh!

Mychael Zulauf from Akinoga Press was kind enough to have a chat with me the other day; you can listen to our podcast here. I would like to think I’m intelligent and articulate on a normal basis but I mixed up Durkheim’s anomie with Marx’s alienation theory but in my defence I was really hungry.

Image from BooksActually

I was interviewed and reviewed on by Dawn Teo on Popspoken, do check it out!

Dawn’s been doing a lovely series of reviews featuring Sing Lit writers like Cyril Wong, Rodrigo Pela Dena Jr, Melissa de Silva, Werner Kho, and Crispin Rodrigues, and I’m really proud to be included. All our books can be purchased at BooksActually. (psst they ship overseas and local shipping is free!)

I’ve been fairly anal about logging down all my reading activity on my Goodreads account and have technically completed 76 books this year, with like 15 other books I started but never got round to finishing. I’m a little disappointed that I got so close to a full 100 (I had almost 60 books in August so you can tell I really fell off the bandwagon there). BUT if you count the sheer amount of fanfiction and /r/nosleep horror stories I have read, not to mention that ridiculously long web novel which is supposed to be three times the length of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I did good.

Recommended Titles 

1. Circe by Madeline Miller – I read this book three times this year, that’s how good it is. Greek mythology + feminist retelling seems like an overdone formula but Miller really brings the characters to life.

2. The Adventures of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke – This was slow going at first because a lot of the first three hundred pages is devoted to solid world building.

3. Hoshimaruhon series by Wena Poon – A hilarious but still deeply moving trilogy that that is a bizarre landscape of East Asian tropes – think swordsmen training in the mountains, and fox spirits, and ninjas – and also a loving tribute to all of these things.

4. Gaze Back by Marylyn Tan – A lot has been written about how this book is obscene or taboo stomping. All true. It is also pushing at the boundaries of how we understand form and language in poetry. Go read it.

5. Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik – For anyone who likes high fantasy. Devoured this 600+ page edition within a day because it was a story that was easy to swallow.

6. The Book of Lost Things by John Connelly – A fairytale for adults that like all fairytales uses a literal adventure as a metaphor for grief and change and growing up before you feel ready to. This is basically the kind of novel I want to write at some point in my life.

7. Pachinko by Min-Jin Lee – I first read this book in 2017 while on holiday in Japan and almost started crying in my tiny one-room Airbnb when my favourite character died. The book was no less brutal on the feels on a second read. This was probably my third book by a Korean author (the first two being Han Kang’s The Vegetarian and Human Acts) and was a complex family saga that spanned three generations which dealt with complexities of Korean-Japanese relations in the 20th century with so much grace and humanity. Highly recommended.

I’ve also been shockingly active on the publishing side. Besides releasing my book in June, I’ve been privileged enough to get accepted into most of the publications I’ve mustered up the energy to apply to. Some of the works listed below were actually listed in 2017 so I don’t really count them as it wasn’t effort put in this year, but still overall a good year despite the poor showing and effort in the last couple of months. Some days I keep beating myself up for not putting in as much effort into my writing as I feel I should; Facebook also likes to remind me that I was producing so much more poetry last year, especially in November and December, and that I am nowhere near the same levels of productivity. I think last year I was also really experimenting with subjects and voice while this year has largely been Angry Woman; while on one level I am glad I have finally embraced that voice (because for the longest time, anger was being emotionally vulnerable as I’m not used to showing it) I really hope to MOVE ON and write other topics soon.

Additionally, I’ve been fortunate enough to be invited to speak at events because people for some reason, are okay with hearing me talk, and also being able to read in foreign stages. The goal for 2019 is to keep doing it again, and submit my CV to various festivals overseas and hopefully get featured as a writer. When in London, someone told me after my set that I had made the world a little bit bigger for everyone else. This was probably the best bit of praise that I have received as a writer and is something that I really want to keep doing. There are so many stories to write and share and it would be a privilege to be a part of them.

Works Published/Accepted in 2018

‘Connect’ – My Lot is The Sky: An Anthology of Poems by Asian Women

Poem for my Breasts – Kindling Issue #5

Questions A Sheltered Singaporean Cannot Answer – Rambutan Literary Issue #6 (forthcoming)

and this too shall pass, a fistful of flowers, Night Whisper – Eunoia Review

Nasi Kang Kang – 3 July 2018 Quarterly Literary Review Singapore (should really be spelt ‘Nasi Kangkang’)

But If You Can’t Set His Balls On Fire The What Was The Point, The Stuff of Every Strapping Man’s Nightmares – SingPoWriMo 2018 anthology

how i know i love, Medusa – Oct 2018 Quarterly Literary Review Singapore

The Wives Poem, Cassandra is Every Woman Who Tried To Speak, Almost a Fairytale – New Reader Magazine Issue #4

Apples – The Fairy Tale Review Pink edition, also Runner Up in their poetry competition in 2018 (forthcoming)

The Wolf Isn’t The Only One in Human Clothing – Corvid Queen Jan 2019