Song of a Reformed Headhunter

I was one of three poets (with Ng Yi-Sheng and Grace Chia) roped in to offer comments on the first manuscripts of 6 new Singapore poets.The session was part of a manuscript bootcamp organized by the indefatigable Joshua Ip. It was a pleasure to engage with the work of Amanda Chong, Daryl Lim, David Wong, Jennifer Anne Champion, Samuel Lee, and Tse Hao Guang, and to have an open and collegial discussion about poetry. The poets will receive much feedback from different people over the weekend, some of it conflicting, some of it confusing, but at the end of the day, we must be our own toughest critics, if we are going to write the kind of poetry that will stand the test of time. Thanks, Josh, for organizing this working group. Thanks too to Sarah for opening your home to us.

"[PAYDAY LOANS] is clearly the poetry of the bounced cheque, the bummed out, the delayed pay day, the day-to-day." My first book of poems reissued by Math Paper Press. 40% off at BooksActually this week only! Thanks, Tse Hao Guang, for the kind review !

The two books are linked only by being carried in my bag to Fire Island last weekend. Banana Yoshimoto's book Kitchen is really two stories, a longer one, "Kitchen," and a shorter one, "Moonlight Shadow." Both deal with mourning for loved ones who died. After the death of her grandmother, her last relative, Mikage was "adopted" into the household of transgender woman Eriko and her son Yuichi. Neither Mikage nor Yuichi quite comes into focus, for me, as characters. It is Eriko, the embodiment of charm, who dominates the story with her personality, and whose death constitutes the true tragedy of the tale. She is Yoshimoto's update of the famous Chinese story by Li Yu, "A Male Mencius's Mother." The ending of "Kitchen" is charming. It is about the power of food, in particular, katsudon, to save one from numb despair. It reminds me of the nori-wrapped cucumber in Murakami's Norweigan Wood . The other story in the book, ...