Inspector Inspector bookcover

Inspector Inspector

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Description

Shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize 2024. Jee Leong Koh writes out of the heart of a contemporary reality most readers are familiar with at second or third hand. He writes of political exile and spiritual homelessness; he understands the perils of war, and the perils of certain kinds of peace. Inspector Inspector is his second Carcanet book (Steep Tea was published in 2015 and chosen as a Best Book of the Year in the Financial Times), and it develops his earlier themes with authority, passion and a sense of possible justice. Steep Tea dialogued with women poets from across the world; Inspector Inspector struggles with the legacies of fathers, personal, poetic and political. Threaded through the erotic poems and poems based on interviews with fellow Singaporeans living in America are thirteen palinodes in the voice of the speaker's dead father, which he answers when the father's voice falls silent. Jee Leong Koh's is an inclusive, generous and forgiving imagination, with an enviable mastery of traditional and experimental forms.

Product Details

PublisherCarcanet Press
Publish DateOctober 27, 2022
Pages88
LanguageEnglish
TypeBook iconPaperback / softback
EAN/UPC9781800172227
Dimensions8.1 X 5.4 X 0.4 inches | 0.3 pounds
BISAC Categories: Poetry, PoetryLGBTQ+

About the Author

Jee Leong Koh is the author of Steep Tea (Carcanet), named a Best Book of the Year by the Financial Times and a Finalist by Lambda Literary in the United States. He has published four other books of poems, a volume of essays, a collection of zuihitsu, and a hybrid work of fiction titled Snow at 5 PM: Translations of an Insignificant Japanese Poet. Inspector Inspector is his second Carcanet book. Born and raised in Singapore, educated in England, Koh lives in New York City, where he heads the literary non-profit Singapore Unbound.

Reviews

'The phrases in Inspector Inspector, themselves all carefully chosen, do not reduce to one refrain, but they do reinforce certain thematic concerns, most prominently the will that applies to all the persons in the book (father, son, lovers, Singaporeans...), and into which I take the reader to be invited: let us remain alive to one another.' H.L. Hix, Stride Magazine
'This is a robust, assured collection from a mature poet with a sound grasp of traditional poetic form - and, crucially, a willingness to experiment with it.' Toh Wen Li, The Straits Times

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