posting about a trifecta of thingies that launched over the weekend, all helpfully archived on Facebook Live eternally for your consumption!

​- Launch of "A Luxury", the compendium reprint of A Luxury We Cannot Afford (an anthology about The Man, published in 2014, just before his death) and A Luxury We Must Afford (an anthology about life after The Man, published in 2015, with the open call period between SG50 celebrations and the elections). ALWCA has been out of print for a while after a few reprints and ALWMA just finished its first run, so its great to see this extremely value-for-money collection hitting the streets very soon.

- Launch of HK-SG Travel Bubble, this year's poetry.sg digital feature that popped up after a random facebook conversation with Eddie Tay. 8 pairs of writers swopped words and pictures about each of their favorite places in HK and SG - have a look at the site itself and indulge a little piece of digital travel!

- Launch of Call and Response 2, a Singapore migrant anthology - where 36 pairs of writers with at least a fleeting affiliation with migration and Singaporeanity exchange words across the page - in microfiction, short stories, poetry and more. the editors talked at length about their hopes, not just for the collection, but for migrant writing in Singapore - this was probably the deepest-digging panel of them all. you can get the book here from BooksActually's online store as always.

check them out slowly on your own time!

perhaps this blog should just be a series of links to my facebook feed, lol.

but here is one i do want to sit on, and come back to for a while - a list of the good people who have interned for me, and the good work they have done.

i really don't post here as much as i should. so this happened around 6 months ago - i redeveloped some of the scattered lines written for farquhar: the musical (in hiatus, renaming to 'found: the musical', reorienting topic to nonio / sophia, and waiting for bicentennial fatigue to recede... long story) into a short ebook, which ethos released for free thanks to the generosity of <redacted redacted>. 

you can get your (free!) copy here alongside several other free ebooks by sing lit writers on adjacent topics, including overlapping takes on 1819 by neil humphreys and colin goh.

​some news snippets:

Straits Times
"...check out Joshua Ip's Farquhar, a snarkily contemporary free verse retelling his life in various voices"

Straits Times, different article, not entirely accurate...
"...It aims to give Singapore's first British Resident the Hamilton treatment, after Lin-Manuel Miranda's smash Broadway hit about American founding father Alexander Hamilton."

I can't believe we are 6 manuscript bootcamps in - 3 for prose, 3 for poetry. I kind of veered off the last few - I definitely didn't read anything from the previous prose camp, and I only barely skimmed the last two poetry camps - but this time I found space to read the prose submissions cover to cover, and enjoyed myself thoroughly. My ability in prose is highly dubious so I'm happy here just to be a fly on the wall and listen to Bernice and Inez take the new batch through - fly-on-the-wall fringe benefits. 

Three years ago, shit got real. Poets took wrestling classes and wrestlers got their poems on, as Sing Lit Station and Grapple Max kicked off the world's first professional wrestling - performance poetry hybrid performance. Literary and literal violence merged as wrestlers became the avatars of spoken word poets as we saw metaphysical battle after battle go down: Raffles vs Farquhar; page poetry vs stage poetry; English vs Singlish.

This year, it's happening again - 29-30 Nov at Aliwal Arts Center - Sing Lit Body Slam: 2 Much 2 Soon. Early bird tickets are going for $35 until 17 Nov (tonight!!!), full price tix are $40, and student tix are $25. We're running this as a fundraiser for Sing Lit Station, which is an IPC, so if you put down your IC and personal details you get 250% tax shield off the value of the tickets. Catch it while you can!

last year for Singapore Writers Festival i laosaied my way out of multiple panels for the first time. SWF is always a terok season so this year i begged new festival director Pooja Nansi to go easy on me for scheduling, and just use me a reserve who can plug into random panels when other ppl laosai.

instead, this is what i got:

<Generation Gap: Koh Tai Ann x Joshua Ip>
Sat 9 Nov 11am-12pm, Blue Room, The Arts House (Festival Pass)
-> In which I get upbraided for 1 hour by one of the most formidable literary ladies to walk the face of Pulau NTU
https://bit.ly/3338iwc

<Issues in Men's Writing>
with Neil Humphreys and Darryl Whetterwriter, mod Amanda Chong
Sat 9 Nov 3pm-4pm, Chamber, The Arts House (Festival Pass)
-> In which I get upbraided for 1 hour by the even more formidable junior version of Koh Tai Ann, with two other unwitting men who are about to, alongside me, have a new arsehole torn where their scrotum currently resides
https://bit.ly/2BIZ6Bo

<Launch of 11 x 9: Collaborative Poetry from the Philippines and Singapore>
Sun 3 Nov 3-4pm, Gallery II, The Arts House (Free)
mod by Martin Villanueva and Joshua Ip
-> in which we get to launch a book with many other happy people who will be doing most of the talking. yay!
https://bit.ly/2PnK24f

<Navigating the SEA>
Sun 3 Nov 730pm-830pm, Rooftop Studios 1-4, National Gallery Singapore (Festival Pass)
Martin Villanueva, Christine Chia, Pauline Fan, mod by Joshua Ip
-> in which other happy people talk about Southeast Asia while I just ask questions. yay!
https://bit.ly/2MSm0fK
​
find me around the house, i'll be wandering around all day looking destroyed. there is apparently a festival bar this year, which will be necessary.

stuff stuff. yes i've been busy.

on saturday i'm off to melbourne for a couple of weeks with Alvin Pang and a gaggle of young Singaporean writers for an intercultural studio with Sreedevi Iyer from RMIT Creative Writing, culminating in an event at MWF - that'll also be the launch of the 2nd WrICE anthology, The Near and the Far, which I contributed a digestif  to.

but i'm most excited really about having two weeks to sit down, away from the day job, and write. much of it will be spent working on my PhD submission for Practice Research Seminars, the next of which is coming up in HCMC in September, but thankfully in PRS, "the practice is the research" or so they say.

i've been somewhat overwhelmed over the last few years, but i managed to sieve through the output of 2 SingPoWriMos and 2 SEAPoWriMos to dig up material to fire off to a few of my favorite journals, which is yay for productivity, but a sadface because along the way i realised a bunch of them have died / went dormant. alas.

perhaps i should put some poems here and make my little corner of the internet a bit more alive.

entirely too overwhelmed to provide regular updates these days. most of the stuff that happens is visible on Sing Lit Station's social media channels, so I'm not going to update on those projects. but quick round-up of my own stuff:

on the personal front, last year saw: 
- the launch of my first personal poetry collection in three years, footnotes on falling. it's about love. plenty of reviews after the jump and you can buy it here. 
- the launch of Call and Response, a migrant / local poetry anthology. bringing 30 "migrant" and 30 "local" poets together to write poetic calls and responses, this anthology is the first time (?) we see "local" and "migrant" singaporeans featured on the same (indeed, facing) pages.  may there be many more to come. can buy here.
- the second edition of sonnets from the singlish: upsize edition debuting in all its green glory. edition 1 (blue), edition 2 (red), upsize edition (3 or 1) with double the size and an extra essay, and now upsize edition (4 or 2) is here to horrify and entertain you!

this year is extremely unlikely to see a personal creative collection, but you are likely to see:
- an e-book on Farquhar and 1819 as part of the bicentennial, written in verse
- an anthology featuring poets from Singapore literally sparring with their counterparts from the Philippines, co-edited with Martin Villeneuva, called Eleven By Nine.

other projects that are on the backburner and will likely roll into 2020 and beyond:
- a similar dueling anthology with Singapore and Indonesia with the organisers of Paviliun Puisi, Mikael Johani and Gratiagusti Charanya Rompas
- a graphic novel, Ten Stories Below (i know, this is taking forever)
- Farquhar: The Musical

footnotes on falling is out! you can buy it from booksactually at this link or in kino and other bookstores. meanwhile, here's a smattering of words about these words. i strongly recommend Jerome Lim's epic review note that i feel obliged to refer to if/when i begin my PhD in practice...

================================================================================

""(I)n certain urgent/ cities," writes Ip in his fourth poetry collection, "words left too/long out cool, curdle/ or clot." In 44 wry, self-deprecating poems, he navigates the detritus of relationships with a smattering of ekphrasis, wordplay through translation and poetic forms, such as the twin cinema and the liwuli. Mind the endnotes." - Olivia Ho, The Straits Times (link)
​
"Ip recognises that moving on is a matter of perspective, where things that seem to fall are in reality moving upwards, where words that once felt devastatingly serious, and names that once seemed significant, are in reality unimportant as time goes on. This, and not defensive erasure, is how closure is eventually found." - Jerome Lim (full review)

"...as we progress through the text the sheer eccentricity of Ip's worldview come to the fore with unexpected images and daring games of language--all this mixed in with genuine accounts of dealing with heartbreak....Ip manages to balance a commitment to experimentation with honest emotion." - Ng Yi-Sheng (link)

"Footnotes on Falling is as much a pensive meditation on the poet's passage through life, with all its vicissitudes, as it is a love letter to the Singaporean form. It is equal parts bitter and acceptance, love and apathy, falling and being caught."
- Valen Lim (link)

"there is a quiet poignancy and playfulness in this collection, something subdued and sad but doesn't take itself so seriously. one may call it a dignified resignation, a cynicism, a play on play on words. or perhaps, it's just the slow maturity of life not unlike the ripening of a fruit, transforming from fresh sour to bittersweet." - Jocelyn Suarez (link)

"This is a post-UnFree Verse Joshua, seemingly more aware of his poetic prowess, and with great power comes great trollsponsibility."
- Crispin Rodrigues (link)

a lot of things are happening so i thought i'd just do a general update post.

1. BooksActually's 24 Hour Bookstore is going down tonight from 7pm to 2am! Buy a brick to support the bookstore and check out plenty of amazing writers - I'll be reading from 1am to 2am alongside Annaliza Bakri. And as a bit of a twist, I won't be reading my own work - I'll be reading favorite stuff from some of the other readers who are going on before me as a bit of a summary - Ang Shuang, Ng Yi-Sheng, and maybe more!

Fri 8 Jun 7pm-2am (i'm 1am-2am), BooksActually, 9 Yong Siak St
https://www.facebook.com/events/175411253290528/

2. Note for Note: #skintones is a series of 3 collaborations between musicians and poets - Stephanie Dogfoot will freestyle over the soundscapes of singer-songwriter Zee Aura, Will Beale will rock your world alongside punk musician Haiz Bastard, and I have an original six-section suite which i co-wrote with long-lost collaborator and legendary jazz pianist, Chok Kerong. Check out three styles of music and three styles of poetry for only $10 - get your tickets fast!

Sat 23 Jun 7-9pm, PlayDen @ The Arts House
https://notefornote.peatix.com/

3. Late Night Poetry @ The Intermission Bar - I won't be done yet that night, because I'm heading to the Intermission Bar @ the Projector (Golden Mile Tower) to read alongside broets Amanda Chong and Daryl Lim Wei Jie. (We recently retreated to HCMC to write together and got absolutely nothing done so this is going to be awesome.) Stick around after our set to check out poetry by the powerpuff trio Pamela Seong Koon, Ang Shuang and Amber Lin, followed by Yeo Tze Hern, Deonn Yang and Samuel Lee all the way till 1am.

Sat 23 Jun 1030pm-1am (we're on 1030-1110), The Intermission Bar @ the Projector
6001 Beach Road, #05-00
Golden Mile Tower, 199589
https://www.facebook.com/events/174380693253175/

4. SingPoOnTheBoat. Poets. Reading poetry. On a boat. 'Nuff said. In the grand history of SingPoOnTheMRT and SingPoOnTheBus, please swing by the ferry terminal and bring poems to read (preferably maritime/nautical theme) - if you have a SPWM / SLS t-shirt, wear it, or if not, you can purchase it on the spot - we'll be on a boat for 2 hours (and possibly on Kusu Island for a bit) reading poetry to ourselves and everyone else nonstop! Join us for a crazy morning full of beautiful lines and sun and sea!

Sat 30 Jun 1030am-1240pm
Marina South Pier Ferry Terminal
$18 for Ferry ride.
https://www.facebook.com/events/2301499450121797/

5. Four Paths to Joy -  A Poetry Reading and Discussion - you get to rest after the boat, and then head down to this powerpacked reading that's part of NLB's Read Fest.  I put together four poets with four very different approaches to writing - one fierce Alfian Sa'at, anyhow change book Daryl Lim, righteous rebel Deborah Emmanuel, and i didn't know Desmond Kon was a conceptualist. I hope got fighting. I am moderator so I will try and trigger fighting. Yay fighting.

Sat 30 Jun 430-530pm, Multi-Purpose Room, Central Public Library
https://www.nlb.gov.sg/golibrary2/e/read-fest-2018-four-paths-to-joy-poetry-reading-discussion-90051884

6. Bilingual Translation Panel - I'll be talking about translation in English and Chinese with Zhou Decheng and Ng Kah Gay, hosted by Agnes Ang from NLB as part of Read Fest. Watch me pretend to be bilingual! 

Sun 15 July 2pm-330pm
NLB Building, Level 16 The Pod.

so all of those are my things. below, we still have a ton of events organised by Sing Lit Station in a busy busy month!

1. On Rain - this thematic reading unites Alvin Pang (City of Rain), Clarissa Goenawan (Rainbirds), Eileen Chong (Rainforest) and Mahita Vas (Rain Tree) in what promises to be a drippy event. $10 for tickets and $5 for students

Thu 21 Jun 745-9pm @ Sing Lit Station
3A Jalan Kubor Level 2 Singapore 199201
https://www.facebook.com/events/2138934413044978/

2. Carnival of Poetry: Fatherhood, at Sing Lit Station - I'm not reading at this one, but this is the regular event put together by the migrant writers of Singapore, where local and migrant poets read alongside each other. Details for this event will be out soon!

Sun 24 Jun 330-5pm @ Sing Lit Station
3A Jalan Kubor Level 2 Singapore 199201
https://www.facebook.com/carnivalofpoetry/

3. Phil and Sarah Kaye in Singapore. Yes, they're back! SLS is hosting them in Singapore at the SRT theatre - event details will be out very soon on Eventbrite, but get ready for an amazing night of spoken word.

Fri 6 July, 730-1030pm @ SRT


​BOOK YOUR CALENDARS!!! MANY THINGS HAPPENING!!!!