i'm coming back from australia, which was productive, and i have 30 old/new sonnets that i need to get out of my system. i was aiming for 22, so i could release a revised sonnets from the singlish with 50% upsize (44 +22 = 66) ! now it looks like it might be 75% upsize (44+ 33 = 77), or possibly even 100% upsize... 88 sounds like a good number, really...

here are the titles for your amusement

- swash
- last night the furniture attacked the gays
- latency
- children at reunion dinner
- recalculating
- TSGT
- force majeure
- piecemeal
- ultimate warrior
- cny
- the girl everybody loved
- parade
- kje
- taken time
- remembering singapore
- flight interruptions
- when mom speaks
- lai lah last pick
- cardboard
- tradition
- CTK
- ineffective poetry workshop
- a nose for the job
- monkey enlists
- but we can still eat them
- guarding pulau tekong, dec 2000
- overstayed
- monkey writes a poem
- grandmother shows us her $3 comb
- grandmother prays

Off to a mate's wedding, and then a whistle-stop reading tour of Australia generously hosted by Griffith Review as part of their New Asia Now issue!

Nearly a year ago, I sent in a couple of pieces for an open call by Griffith for "40 Under 40", a bumper issue of the Australian journal featuring 40 new Asian voices under the age of 40. One of mine snuck in, thanks to coeditors Julianne Schultz and Jane Camens, and the issue came out this year under the revised title "New Asia Now".

Together with Chinese enfant terrible Murong Xuecun and the eclectic Indonesian Maggie Tiojakin, I'll be reading from New Asia Now and my own work while discussing the ripples of change spreading across Asian writing at a series of writing festivals and events - Melbourne, Geelong, Brisbane, Gold Coast and Adelaide.

Will drop a list of events soon - pretty excited!

two calls for your attention!

1. SingPoWriMo 2015: The Anthology needs MONEH. Just like last year, we're putting out the call with an indiegogo campaign - your money will contribute to the publication of an amazing anthology with Math Paper Press, and whatever left over will be used to give free books to schools that need it. What's more, you can have access to amazing perks such as discounted copies, signed first editions, original poems commissioned by the amazing editors Daryl Yam, Jennifer Anne Champion and meself... and a special appearance by the mysterious Leit Motif!

2. A Luxury We Must Afford - a new anthology edited by Christine Chia, Cheryl Julia Lee and me opened for submissions this National Day. The call will be open until a week after elections. Unlike the previous anthology, A Luxury We Cannot Afford - this collection will not look back, nor be fixated on the life of a single individual. Rather, it's more about what happens afterwards, what happens forwards, what happens onwards (Majulah!). Find out more after the jump.

And yes, POETRY IS COMING.

Esquire Singapore very generously lumped me with 49 manly luminaries and left me the last word on "the state of the Singaporean man".

I gave them an article on DOTA.

I also have a separate article on trolls coming out in Esquire in a subsequent issue. They seem to like my fantasy shtick, so, um, hooray!

Finally, The Middle Ground has very generously given me a spot on their regular lineup, called Tuesdays with Ipster Cafe. I've been a fan of the team behind TMG ever since their previous incarnation as the now-defunctBreakfast

- making love from scrabble tiles is into her second print run with a beautiful new cover from the team at Sarah and Schooling - do check that if you haven't got a copy already!

- 

ooh, lots to say.

SG:IO at London was fun, and i will write a few words about it soon.

A Luxury We Cannot Afford and SingPoWriMo were gifted the honor of a great review by Collier Nogues in Cha: An Asian Journal, which you can read here. it's called "Singapore, Anthologised".

on that note - i don't think I'll be able to finish my graphic novel, or my short story projects, or my novel, or a new poetry collection in the next 12 months. work is swarming up and it'll be a very busy year, with hardly any room for creative space. however, i've had the luck to meet some great writers who i am excited to collaborate with on editorial projects over the past couple of years, and have begun to outsource some of the more administrative aspects of putting books together to a very dedicated team of interns.

there are different flavors of joy and challenge in putting together an anthology of other people's work, vs a collection of one's own. the creative process is more intensive in some ways - the right brain cannot really be rushed. it needs the time to percolate, to generate. conversely - anthologising is a slightly more left-brain process, demanding more critical skills, organisational and administrative skills. pattern recognition and sequence forming, standard-imposing. and left-brain work can always be jammed into those short half-hour gaps between or after work, unlike right-brain work. i can't write a poem in that kind of space but i can sure edit one. equally importantly, i can outsource some aspects of editorial work, but i can't outsource any creative work.

so ironically, as my workload piles up, i'm becoming more of an anthologiser/publisher rather than a writer per se. not ideal, but at least i'm doing my part in populating the scene and giving new people a chance to shine.

here are some books you can look forward to in the next 12 months:

- the first two collections from a new imprint of math paper press - TEN YEAR SERIES! they are Tse Hao Guang's "Deeds of Light" and David Wong's "For The End Comes Reaching". i think these are two of the most exciting new collections by young Singaporean poets... ever. Ten Year Series seeks to put new manuscripts through the grinder - of a full-scale manuscript bootcamp incorporating publishers, poets, academics and editors to whip those books into shape, combined with a year-long developmental process. i'm really looking forward to bringing these books to you.
[launch target - Nov 15 (SWF)]

- SINGPOWRIMO 15: THE ANTHOLOGY - a collection of the best work from this year's Singapore Poetry Writing Month, is becoming a reality. Jennifer Anne Champion and Daryl Yam have signed on as the other two co-editors, supported ably by Chief Administrator Natalie Wang. The whole team are alumni of last year's SingPoWriMo - Champion is one of the six poets who went on to Manuscript Bootcamp, whereas Yam holds the undisputed honor of Most-Poems-Ever-Published-In-SPWM14:The Anthology. it really embodies the community and nurturing spirit of SPWM that poets who found opportunities and inspiration in the previous year can move on to be editors in the next year to help give back to the community, and gain new literary experience as well. in the same spirit, it's going to be crowd-funded, so look out for us coming for your money very very soon!
[launch target - Dec 15]

- UNFREE VERSE - is an anthology of Singapore poetry that stretches all the way back to the 50s and 60s - we're looking to put together a full body of poetic history that disproves the oft-held view that Singapore poetry is "all about free verse". a country of constraints and OB markers should, if anything, thrive in producing a poetry of restraint and measured meter. my fellows in the editorial team are the super-hardworking Tse Hao Guang and Theophilus Kwek, who lend a high level of academic rigor to this project that i feel somewhat inadequate to sustain. (I'm currently looking for a Chief Administrator for this project - do pop a mail if you're interested)
[launch target - Feb 16]

- A LUXURY WE MUST AFFORD - is a sequel of sorts to last year's "A Luxury We Cannot Afford". If ALWCA was all about The Man, and by extension, SG<50, ALWMA looks beyond those storied years and into the future, towards SG >50 and our certainly uncertain hopes and dreams. Christine Chia and me are now joined by fresh editorial blood in the form of the immensely talented Cheryl Julia Lee, who will help give us old fogies the credibility to talk about young people stuff. 
[launch target - Feb 16]

1. got a review for sonnets from the singlish out at asiancha.com, thanks to chloe li and eddie tay. 

"This book's uniqueness lies with the poet's choice of framing frivolously real and realistically frivolous Sinaporean cultural experiences in a traditional poetic form."


pretty spot on about my co-mingling of the frivolous/trivial and the "high" form, but somewhat questionable sample poem choices, imho.



2. also, an interview has gone up at kitaab, thanks to felicia low-jimenez. i talk at length about the various literary programmes i've been involved in co-sprouting over the past two years - math remedial, singpowrimo, the image-symbol department, ministry of noise, burn after reading, manuscript bootcamp, and ten year series. oh all these titles. go pop over and read and find out what they mean.


3. singpowrimo is halfway through (!!!) and we're 1135 members strong! Alvin Pang closed out the first week, and I did week 2, to much moaning and complaint from the internet - but the most painful-sounding prompts, like the empat perkataan and the acrostic, actually got the greatest responses! this only goes to show that Singaporeans are suckers for punishment. next up, the dreaded Leit Motif....

come on over and join us!

4 words. SingPoWriMo.

Well, one word. kind of. 

Singapore Poetry Writing Month.

Come online. Check out crazy prompts dished at you daily by Alvin Pang, Pooja Nansi, the mysterious Leit Motif, and me-self. Write a poem. Every day. For the entire month of April.

Let's do this people!

i'm going to have to punch out of active participation in the literary scene for at least the next three months (if not the next year(!)) due to work leaving me no weekends and hardly any free time. 

however i am enjoying a little bit of an extended indian summer / last hurrah, composed of - (1) manuscript bootcamp which concluded last weekend - separate post about that coming up; (2) singpowrimo 2015 which will run itself through april 2015 - publicity about that coming up too; (3) a ton of school talks, largely courtesy of the words go round festival in 2015, but also a few lingering SLP events as part of the efforts to raise the profile of the prize. 

hopefully can swing a few more young converts to the love of literature!

this is somewhat late, but i had a blast last Dec at the Goa Arts and Lit Fest - my first time in Goa as well as in India. to say the very least it was a colorful experience, and i took a bit of time to get my bearings in an exceedingly unique and idiosyncratic country. but once i got into the swing of things (and found out where the alcoholics were) everything was fine.

i'd never met prof edwin thumboo in person before the trip, and one would expect a healthy generation gap and all that comes with that - but he was the personification of generosity and friendliness throughout, giving me the chance to read more than my fair share during his panel, and never shying from being a human photo opportunity as the conference guest-of-honor.