Alternative Literary Eco-system

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On July 12, filmmaker Jason Soo and poet Ally Chua received their Singapore Unbound Fellowship awards from award-winning filmmaker Tan Pin Pin at UltraSuperNew in Singapore. The award enabled Jason to travel to Thailand to interview the exiled aging members of the Communist Party of Malaya, a project for which he would never have received funding from the government. Ally, who will be coming to NYC this year, will experience the freedom and trust that a true writer deserves since she does not have to complete any reports at the end of her stay. Having selected her, we believe in her talent, promise, and determination. She will be free to grow and follow her writerly instincts.

As I explained at the event, Singapore Unbound has developed a literary ecosystem that provides an alternative to the one run by the state. Our biennial literary festival and monthly readings offer a showcase for excellent writing. The fellowship caters to the growth of young writers. SP Blog reviews their books. And with the establishment of Gaudy Boy in 2017, we now have the capacity to publish them. We have just announced the five finalists of the 2nd Gaudy Boy Poetry Book Prize. Development, publication, review, and presentation: all the pieces are in place.

And we do all this in the hope of increasing thoughtful and imaginative participation in the critique and reform of society without fear or favor. If you are dependent on state largesse, you are highly unlikely to criticize your funder. On this last trip back to Singapore, again I heard dismaying stories of self-censorship and worse, so fearful writers and organizers were not to offend the powers-that-be. In such a climate of caution and mistrust, literature and writing cannot flourish. We have the artificial Supertrees of the Gardens by the Bay, but not the wild vitality of nature. To speak of an alternative eco-system is, after all, to return from the sterility of state planning to the fruitfulness of organic growth.

Jee Leong Koh
July 18, 2019

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