New Singapore Poetries
"Each voice is singular, every page yields surprises." -Wong May, author of In the Same Light
A bold showing of voice, uniqueness, nerve, and precision from a new generation of Singapore poets.
Wrapping itself, tasting, luxuriating in the recurrent themes of the body, family, sexuality, spirituality, neo-colonialism, geographies, positionalities, identity, and nationalism, New Singapore Poetries brims with the ambition and talent of 18 of Singapore's newest poetic voices, many hitherto unpublished.
Showcasing an expansive body of work by each poet, New Singapore Poetries is a breathtaking testament to the imagination and nerve of what poetry in Singapore can be-an interrogation of the very nature of what constitutes a poem; a straddling of national identity and personal grief; a processing and yet remembrance of erased history and rewritten trajectories-a way to tell the truth anew.
Mired against the backdrop of Singapore the country, Singapore the city-state republic, and 'Singapore' the concept, bearing witness to the past and crystallizing the present, New Singapore Poetries architects futures yet unseen, but yearned for.
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"An overwhelming collection. One is no longer certain where the boundaries are in the bounty of talents. An exciting poetry enterprise that enlarges one's vision of Singapore." WONG MAY, author, In the Same Light
"The politics-post-colonial, ecological, sexual-are vividly embodied in psalms, visual poems, elegies, sequences, satires...Full of surprise, offence, humour and, above all, unexpected pleasure." MICHAEL SCHMIDT, editor, Carcanet's New Poetries
"Another renaissance is happening, more varied, diverse in gender, race and culture, more bold and adventurous in poetics and politics. One is struck by the astonishing array of distinct, arresting voices and styles, the poets' attentiveness to words and the in-between spaces, their readiness to push the boundaries of form and technique, and the quest to be free of the shackles of identity politics." BOEY KIM CHENG, author, The Singer
"Challenges us to question and unsettle known tropes, to leave one shore of definitions in search of other possible meanings...to unbind us from habitual reliance on a colonial legacy...[to] dismantle the normative through queer subversions and investigations. A sumptuous palette of fresh linguistic exploration." LYDIA KWA, author, Pulse
"Loud, proud and unbowed, New Singapore Poetries [is] a cornucopia of young and emerging poetic voices spiked with vigour, rudeness, melodrama and devil-may-care sass. These truth-seekers strive for a spirited un-learning, a delicious abandonment of old, didactic ways, [navigating] intersections of identity and gender and community with strange interest." YEOW KAI CHAI, author, One to the Dark Tower Comes
"Vital, form-busting gorgeousity made flesh...breaks-and makes-new ground with the ardency and agency of these fresh voices." AMANDA LEE KOE, author, Ministry of Moral Panic
"Marks a critical point in Singapore's literary development." MEKONG REVIEW
"Fabulously transgressive and untranslatable. It demands the reader's surrender to pleasure as the first principle. . . . Undeniably a brave new landmark in Singapore poetry anthologies." CHRISTINE CHIA, QLRS
