Song of a Reformed Headhunter

  "Similarly, the poem, for all its labour and craft, is merely one person's understanding of another, possibly misjudged, and one that arguably says more about the writer than the subject. And though this current of self-critique runs through the entire collection, this project of portraiture in verse (in which both interviewer and interviewee curate the details that are meant to present an entire life in short verse) seems too important for the poems to abandon. The subtitle of the collection, 'A Simple History of Singaporeans in America', speaks to this confident ambivalence. Together, the verse portraits form a history of a community, but they remain "simple" – snapshots of particular lives in a particular place. It is a documentary and poetic project with inherent limitations, but nonetheless worthwhile." Thanks, Kristina Tom, for this perceptive review of SAMPLE AND LOOP: A SIMPLE HISTORY OF SINGAPOREANS IN AMERICA. And thanks, Yong Shu Hoong, for ...

Here's a thoughtful and perceptive  review of Inspector Inspector, by Al Lim: "Inspector Inspector is a haunting meditation on death and desire through a father's voice and legacy. Jee Leong Koh's second book at Carcanet Press intersperses several sequences – palinodes written in his dead father Koh Dut Say's voice, gratitude to his poetry mentors, poems based on his sex diaries in New York City, inspections during the Covid-19 pandemic, and life interviews with diasporic Singaporeans. The collection ends with a eulogy – a response to his father's death."

I have a poem and talk published in the latest issue of the Quarterly Literary Review of Singapore . The poem is "The Columnist," written for Kopin Tan. The talk is "'Core and Case': Some Thoughts on the Subaltern Sonnet," first delivered at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) Conference, in Portland, Oregon, on March 29, 2019, as part of the panel "#SonnetsSoWhite?: Poets of Color on Race and Traditional Verseforms." Thanks to Toh Hsien Min and Yong Shu Hoong, respectively, for the publications.

Thanks, Lola Koundakjian, for organizing last night's reading FOR A WORLD WITHOUT WALLS, in conjunction with the World Poetry Movement at Saint Illuminator's Armenian Apostolic Cathedral. What a tremendous cloud of poetic witnesses, embodied and voiced by the 18 participating poets. There were rousing calls to action, moving appeals to pity, satirical depictions of wrong, and sharp diagnoses of individuality. I read Frost's "Mending Wall" and then one of my poems about Singaporeans in America, "The Ceramicist." While reading over the Frost poem in preparation, I wondered if anyone has ever noticed that the speaker, in distinguishing himself from his wall-loving neighbor, is also building a wall between them. Frost's speakers are not his mouthpieces (see the much-misunderstood "The Road Not Taken") but may be airing an attitude that the poet wishes us to be wary of, if not criticize. The speaker of "Mending Wall" speaks of ...

QLRS has just published my essay on Goh Poh Seng's book-length poem Lines from Batu Ferringhi . Thanks, Hsien Min and Shu Hoong. (In the same issue also, my answers to Shu Hoong's Proust Questionnaire .) The essay will have done its work if it interests someone to re-issue this vital work of Singapore literature. Batu Ferringhi is a beach area in the north of Penang Island in Malaysia. In the 16th century, Portuguese traders from India stopped at Batu Ferringhi to replenish their water supplies, and their visits gave the place its name. "Batu Ferringhi" means "Foreigner's Rock". At this liminal space between land and sea, one seeks the foreign in one's familiar self. In the 1970s it was famous as a hippie's hangout, as a place where foreigners came to swim "in the nude at the freshwater pools" (according to Wong Chun Wai's 'Life's a beach in Penang'). Goh was not a hippie. He was a married man with children, a doc...