Tempo(rary) at the Singapore Festival 2020 (Yangon, Myanmar)

At the beginning of February, a handful of artists from Singapore and Myanmar (along with honorary Singaporean collaborator Nicola Anthony) came together under the curation of Marie Pierre-Mol of Intersections Gallery to showcase work around the idea of time. This was part of a larger event organised by the Singapore Tourist Board (STB) as part of their efforts to raise an awareness of various aspects of Singapore, from food, culture, and art to retail as well as to partner with local restaurants and artists as a way of forging bonds between Singapore and Myanmar.

The view from the top of Chin Tsong Palace

The event was held at the Chin Tsong Palace, a sprawling complex that was built by Lim Chin Tsong, said to have been Myanmar’s richest man at one point. The building was finished but never occupied and in the 1960s it was commandeered by drug smugglers. The Palace had a network of tunnels and secret rooms under it, and one of the tunnels was said to have led to the river. Much history, many feels.

The Chin Tsong Palace at night

Tempo(rary) is a collaboration with Burmese artist Maung Day. It consists of a dialogue in poems and photographs. Over the course of a month, I sent a poem to Maung Day and he responded with a poem or a photo. And then he sent a photo to me, and I responded in kind. We created ten pairs of work from this exchange, each one accompanied by a metronome set to a different tempo.

The photograph is from Maung Day, the poem is from me. All the poems were translated to Burmese as well. Text layout by Nicole Soh.

Part of the work in the exhibition space

Ticking at a range of tempos, the metronomes are a sonic reflection of the varying speeds of two very different cities.

Time in the city is a function of progress and growth. It is invisible; fleeting and always in scarcity.

We are always running out of time. Time is never on our hands. We need more time, we say, this commodity that can never be bought or bartered. 

We are made by time, its invisible, inevitable ticking, keeping tempo to the rhythms and reasons of our lives. Time soothes and serenades, summons and silences.

The crowds weren’t what we were led to expect, partly due to the prohibitive ticket prices. The food was also probably priced beyond the reach of the average local. But hey, at least the art was free!

Following the exhibition, I received the incredible news that Tempo(rary) has been selected to be part of the 12th Yangon Photo Festival. The work will be exhibited at the Rosewood Hotel from 19 Feb to 21 March. Do check it out if you happen to be in Yangon!

Of Tea and Terrariums

BuySingLit is back for a third year (https://buysinglit.sg/programmes-list/) and there are a whole host of programmes, workshops, performances and readings that caters to different languages and age groups.

Book publishers, retailers and literary non-profits band together to encourage more people to discover and embrace Singapore’s literature. And they are doing this through a variety of way, some conventional and some experimental. Its good to know that as a literary community, we’re not content to rinse and repeat but are willing to innovate and embrace new ideas.

I’m excited to be doing two new things for this year’s festival. The first is a terrarium workshop called We all step on snails: A Poetry & Terrarium Experience on the 9th and 17th of March, 1-3pm.

Make your very own terrarium while I serenade you with a series of poems about our natural world. Note: snails not included!

Tickets can be found at bit.ly/terrariumtickets.
Each ticket comes with a $10 #BuySingLit voucher.
Each session is limited to 20 pax.


On 16 March at 2pm, I’ll be at the very lovely Temenggong 18/20 space, a black and white bungalow along Temenggong Road, to share my poems from my travels while everyone has a cup, or two, of tea. Think of this as a rest-stop for the world-weary traveler. Let poetry be a balm that refreshes and renews the soul. Best of all, this is a double bill featuring fellow travel writer Tan Mei Ching.

Note: Please bring your own cups.
General Admission – $28
Student / NSF / Senior Citizen – $20*
Ticket price excludes ticketing agent fee.
Each ticket comes with a $10 #BuySingLit voucher!
Get your tickets here 

And Spomenik is away!

 My sixth collection of poetry, Spomenik, was launched at the Arts House on Saturday, 12th March 2016. It was a milestone for me, as this is the first time my poems and photographs have been published together.

The poems and photographs are interwoven together in the book, and while one can read them individually, they are best seen as complementing each other. 

Spomenik is the Croatian word for monument, and I envisioned the art in this book to be a series of monuments that speak of my journey through the Balkans.

   
 I had a fantastic emcee and friend in the lovely Michelle Martin, who governed the session with aplomb and perfect timing, and I’m extremely grateful to the able team at Ethos Books, who decided to take a chance on this very left-field idea and bring it to completion. My thanks to Mr Ethos himself, Fong Hoe Fang, for first being convinced and subsequently Kah Gay, Suning and Adeleena for patiently shaping and crafting the work until my vision was realised.

Here’s a video from Six-six News, where I read one of my poems from Spomenik. Enjoy!

 Past the Gates of Socialism

 You can pick up a copy of Spomenik online, or at selected bookstores around Singapore. 

Litprom 2016

It was a busy weekend at Litprom, the Society for the Promotion of African, Asian and Latin American Literature. The 2016 edition of the festival, with the theme ‘New World Literature and the Global South,’ featured 12 authors from Asia, Africa and South America. Together with Amanda Lee Koe from Singapore, we joined a distinguished bevy of writers on a range of panels and discussions.

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Just before the festival, I had the chance to speak at the Metropolitan School Frankfurt to a very endearing and enthusiastic bunch of 9th and 10th Graders about the power and value of poetry. I think my rendition of Dog TV had them thinking about the possibilities of seeing the poetic through the mundane.

Then I had the great pleasure of hanging out with Dirk Huelstrunk, the grandfather of poetry slam in Frankfurt. A true pioneer of slam in the city, nowadays, he trucks in his own cadences, merging sound art through words and loops. The soundscape is emotive, charged with dissonance and urgency and we worked on two pieces, Camera Be and Well Done, which we performed as part of the closing act for the festival. I helmed the rest of the evening, doing favourites such as Made in China and O Holy Torrent as well as newer pieces such as Kenny G. The latter was accompanied with a mash up of Kenny G’s tunes, to much hilarity.

The festival was held over a rainy, windy weekend in Frankfurt. A buzzing business city at best, it empties out during weekends, and the weather seemed to follow, dropping to -5 degrees Celsius in the mornings.

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Sometimes, the best conversations were held over mealtimes. One memorable lunch I had was with Angolan author José Eduardo Agualusa and Brazilian fictionist Luiz Ruffato. We traded stories about ludicrous festival experiences, including one being stuck on a cruise boat floating down the Amazon for a whole week. The audience was a bunch of older women, constantly making ‘literary’ advances, like piranhas circling for the kill.

I had the chance to walk briefly around in the drizzle on the day after the festival, snapping a few photos, and deciding that monochrome best fit the mood of the city.

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Private Citizens

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I’m super stoked to be headed to Amsterdam to perform and exhibit poems together with three other amazing artists on 9th and 10th October at A-Lab in Kulter.

I’ll be exhibiting haikus and photographs from a series titled ‘A Rush of Caffeine to the Head’ and performing a spoken word set around the theme of ‘Private Citizens.’

We are also raising funds to pay for things like transport, equipment rental and exhibition costs, so do contribute if you can!

Private Citizens on Indiegogo