Song of a Reformed Headhunter

I wrote a poem for Kevin Kwan, yes, the author of Crazy Rich Asians . Thanks, Hsien Min and QLRS, for publishing it. Chinese New Year celebrations. Had lunch and lo hei at West New Malaysia with Kim L, Dee M, Joel A, Melinda, Zhi Yuan, and Guy. Having steamboat dinner at Patsey's place tonight in Croton-on-Hudson. On Monday, announced the 4th cycle of Singapore Unbound fellowships: two writing residencies in a Southeast Asian country of the fellow's choice. Started on Wednesday the 4-class course on phenomenology with the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research. The instructor is Michael Stevenson, a historian of philosophy. Brentano's distinction between mental and physical phenomenon, picked by Husserl in his Logical Investigations , with the emphasis on "intention," to be glossed as the "aboutness" of consciousness. Consciousness is always the consciousness of something. Hard, but interesting.

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 very much, everyone who came out to the Singapore launch of Steep Tea tonight. You were, in a word, overwhelming. Your support, love, and friendship. I am so grateful. I'm just sorry that there wasn't time to talk to everyone properly. I hope we will see one another when I visit again next summer. If you fancy hearing me talk cock sing song about "Raising the Profile of Asian Literature" (10 am) and "Getting Published Overseas" (2:30 pm), come to the Singapore Writers Festival at The Arts House tomorrow (Sat). For those of you who couldn't get a copy of my book tonight, it will be available at the festival bookshop at The Arts House from tomorrow to the end of the festival. Thanks again, Boedi Widjaja, for the cover image and for coming out tonight. Thank you, Anthony Koh Waugh, for hosting the launch at your wonderful bookstore. You are a sweetheart. At the Singapore Writers Festival, I was a panelist in two...

Math Paper Press re-issues my first book of poems Payday Loans in a beautiful new edition designed by Shellen Teh, with a new critical preface by Joshua Ip and an interview with me conducted by Chloe Miller for Eclectica Magazine. To launch the book, I read at BooksActually's reading series "An Evening with..." on Saturday, July 26. Ian Chung moderated the session, asking me questions about each of my books that I read from. I was really pleased to see familiar and new faces in the audience. I won't remember everyone, so my apologies in advance, but here are the faces that flash across my mind: Robert Yeo, Leong Liew Geok, Toh Hsien Min, Zhang Ruihe, Shawn Chua, Tania De Rozario and her lovely partner, Chong Li Chuan, Boedi Widjaja and his gracious wife, Weetz and his partner .... Shawn took the photo of me and Kenny's cat.

Order information for "Starry Island: New Writing from Singapore," the summer 2014 issue in the MANOA series of international literature published by the University of Hawai'i. Edited by Frank Stewart and Fiona Sze-Lorrain, this issue features the work of over two dozen writers and translators, including Kim Cheng Boey, Philip Jeyaretnam, Jee Leong Koh, Shirley Geok-lin Lim, O Thiam Chin, Wena Poon, Alfian Sa'at, Jeremy Tiang, Toh Hsien Min, and Cyril Wong.

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...

The essay appears in Volume II of Sharing Borders: Studies in Contemporary Singaporean-Malaysia Literature , itself a part of the series Writing Asia: The Literatures in Englishes . In the essay, instead of rehashing the tired discourse of nationalism in the poetry of earlier Singaporean poets, Gwee focuses on younger poets who published their first books in 1997 and later. Relatively free from the control of both State and University, these poets put out, with the help of independent publishers, a series of works that have re-energized Singaporean writing. A chronology: 1997 - Alvin Pang's Testing the Silence , Aaron Lee's A Visitation of Sunlight , and Yong Shu Hoong's Isaac . 1998 - Grace Chia's Womango , Alfian Sa'at's One Fierce Hour , Felix Cheong's Temptation and Other Poems , Damien Sin's Saints, Sinners and Singaporeans and Gwee's Who Wants to Buy a Book of Poems? 1999 - Felix Cheong's I Watch the Stars Go Out , Daren Shiau's ...