Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Alex Kerr's Dogs and Demons  (2001) is a polemic against the wrong direction that Japan has taken in in the closing decades of the last century. The charge sheet looks serious. Excessive construction is destroying the environment. Bureaucrats are enriching themselves at the expense of national interest. The country is piling up its national debt but losing its technological edge. Schools are teaching rote-learning and social conformity. Culture has degenerated into manga and anime, plastic flower-arrangement and context-less architecture. The unremittingly bleak picture makes me doubt that I visited the same country last summer that the author is describing. Still, I remember things in retrospect that fit with Kerr's picture. The Kamo River in Kyoto was barricaded on both sides by concrete embankment. Pachinko parlors contributed to the noise pollution in Shinjuku in Tokyo, where we stayed. Manga took up more than half of the shelves of the bookshop in one train station. The cu...

little urban sprawl between tokyo and kyoto the bullet train is fast

Broadway souvenirs in a miniature bar Les Misérables

the Kamo river cuddled by cement shoulders hello, hello kitty

a tree fell in the night what does it matter what kind of tree?

Chelsea galleries walkabout with GH, S and R last Saturday. At Jack Shainman Gallery, Nick Cave's series Rescue "comprises sculptures that incorporate found ceramic dogs sitting on furniture within elaborate grottos or dreamlike dens," decorated with branches, bead necklaces and fake birds. At Mike Weiss Gallery, Tom Fruin's Color Study , an exhibition of new work: "structures, illuminated from within, flash and dim to their own internal rhythms becoming beacons of color and temples of light dotting city skylines and community parks...." I like the gridded colors of a cover for a water tank. At Sikkema Jenkins & Co., Jorge Queiroz's "large-scale drawings suggest surrealist landscapes or dreamscapes in vibrant color and amorphous forms." At Mary Boone, Jacob Hashimoto's Sky Farm Fortress was full of childish wonder. * In the evening, the launch of Starry Island: New Writing from Singapore at the new St. Mark's Bookshop...

My collection of zuihitsu The Pillow Book has been shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize. It joins five other works in the shortlis t for the category of English Poetry. The other works are Cordelia by Grace Chia, The Viewing Party by Yong Shu Hoong, Circle Line by Theophilus Kwek, Tender Delirium by Tania De Rozario and Sonnets from the Singlish by Joshua Ip. I am grateful to Michael Schmidt for first publishing the work in PN Review , and to Kenny Leck and the Math Paper Press team for publishing it as part of their Babette's Feast chapbook series. The prizewinner will be announced at the Awards Ceremony, during the Singapore Writers Festival in Singapore on November 4.

the wind is rising the shadow of the pine holds its ground

the boy in the window at the back of the school bus a cricket in a jar

to make a living on the slope of a volcano mining sulphur

old green leaves on the frangipani tree beside the bulldozer

Tender Delirium  I close the book in bed the moon is up

how many writing spiders did the wild pheasant eat before ending on my plate?

In summer's heart the haiku of no haiku