ownself say ownself
new & selected poems by joshua ip
Published by Landmark Books
ownself say ownself is a chaotic collection of new & selected poetry by joshua ip. half of it is 44 poems salvaged from the award-winning, out-of-print wilderness of his first five-ish collections, marked-up with mischievous metric marginalia in the newly-invented form of the tilde (tl;dr). the next half is 44 new translations, performance pieces and formal experiments written over the course of a practice research phd. so you get the best of six-ish books for the price of one, which fortuitously sums to 88 poems. see satirical singlish sonnets scrabble with spurned spoken word and shady pseudo-song-translations alongside snide summaries, split-screen cinemas, song-dynasty susurrus, scottish-civil-servant-salutations and circumlocutory sex scenes, in a singsong celebration of spurious sesquilinguality!
ISBN: 9789819404575
ownself say ownself is a chaotic collection of new & selected poetry by joshua ip. half of it is 44 poems salvaged from the award-winning, out-of-print wilderness of his first five-ish collections, marked-up with mischievous metric marginalia in the newly-invented form of the tilde (tl;dr). the next half is 44 new translations, performance pieces and formal experiments written over the course of a practice research phd. so you get the best of six-ish books for the price of one, which fortuitously sums to 88 poems. see satirical singlish sonnets scrabble with spurned spoken word and shady pseudo-song-translations alongside snide summaries, split-screen cinemas, song-dynasty susurrus, scottish-civil-servant-salutations and circumlocutory sex scenes, in a singsong celebration of spurious sesquilinguality!
ISBN: 9789819404575
reviews
"Joshua Ip’s latest poetry collection, ownself say ownself, reads like an evolution, condensed into one collection and laid out in satisfying chronology for us. ...Written over nearly a decade, they are now accompanied by 44 new ‘tildes’—a four-line rhyming poem meant to be a response, summary or a riff off of the collected poems. Not only do they function that way, but they also serve as a way for Ip to reflect on the poet he used to be, where he’s been and possibly, where he might take us with New Work. Growth is the underlying impulse behind this collection....the title itself suggests this pursuit to be the independent, inward process of translation and the act of self-paraphrasing to create something new. Joshua Ip is evolving, and he’s letting us know that."
- Shaik Aqeel, Sploosh.sg
"...this collection reveals his range, inventiveness & raw intelligence like no previous volume he's published.
...about half the book comes from previous collections—Sonnets from the Singlish, Making Love with Scrabble Tiles, Footnotes on Falling, Translations to the Tanglish—all of them clever, self-contained works of art, even the number of poems in each volume heavy w witty numerological significance...
...almost all his newer stuff is building on these earlier works. His forays w the sonnet form are preludes to some crazy experimentation w form—he showcases a number he helped invent &/or popularise at SingPoWriMo, including the liwuli, the empat perkataan & the twin cinema, plus the digestif: an extemporised homage to other poets at the same reading. & his zany 21st C Singaporeanised translations of Tang & Song poems were practice for a host of other translations of varying faithfulness, some prioritising sound & form over literal meaning (he's done a whole series of Pierre Vinclair's Covid sonnets, still rhyming after tx from the original French); even Mandarin, Malay & Tamil pieces from Pan Shou, Jay Chou, Mohamed Latiff Mohamed & Harini Vee; plus the epic "dante digestif singapura" in which he commissioned 100 SG poets to "translate" a canto of the Divine Comedy into a single line.
Oh, & he's got a few spoken word poems in here too—so pleased to have a copy of "Mahathir Never Die"—which highlight how different he is on stage from the rest of us, focussing on sonic experimentation over storytelling or simple rhyme but still keeping it real w the SGness.
... like a swimming pool, this is a career that gets deeper the longer you wade into it."
- Ng Yi-Sheng
"It's almost like he pulled an Iron man and did this... *snap*"
- @caesuratok
- Shaik Aqeel, Sploosh.sg
"...this collection reveals his range, inventiveness & raw intelligence like no previous volume he's published.
...about half the book comes from previous collections—Sonnets from the Singlish, Making Love with Scrabble Tiles, Footnotes on Falling, Translations to the Tanglish—all of them clever, self-contained works of art, even the number of poems in each volume heavy w witty numerological significance...
...almost all his newer stuff is building on these earlier works. His forays w the sonnet form are preludes to some crazy experimentation w form—he showcases a number he helped invent &/or popularise at SingPoWriMo, including the liwuli, the empat perkataan & the twin cinema, plus the digestif: an extemporised homage to other poets at the same reading. & his zany 21st C Singaporeanised translations of Tang & Song poems were practice for a host of other translations of varying faithfulness, some prioritising sound & form over literal meaning (he's done a whole series of Pierre Vinclair's Covid sonnets, still rhyming after tx from the original French); even Mandarin, Malay & Tamil pieces from Pan Shou, Jay Chou, Mohamed Latiff Mohamed & Harini Vee; plus the epic "dante digestif singapura" in which he commissioned 100 SG poets to "translate" a canto of the Divine Comedy into a single line.
Oh, & he's got a few spoken word poems in here too—so pleased to have a copy of "Mahathir Never Die"—which highlight how different he is on stage from the rest of us, focussing on sonic experimentation over storytelling or simple rhyme but still keeping it real w the SGness.
... like a swimming pool, this is a career that gets deeper the longer you wade into it."
- Ng Yi-Sheng
"It's almost like he pulled an Iron man and did this... *snap*"
- @caesuratok