Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . A 16-year-old student has been charged for the murder of a 13-year-old in their school in Singapore. The tragedy has shocked the country, which has very low rates of violent crimes. A chronological account of the incident was given by the Education Minister in Parliament. The 16-year-old was assessed at the Institute for Mental Health in 2019 after he attempted to commit suicide at the age of 14. This new revelation has prompted even more calls for a review of counseling services in Singapore schools. Especially perceptive and eloquent was the call for greater mental health resources and support for schools issued by President Halimah Yacob . In Singapore, those found guilty of murder may receive the death penalty. A minor below the age of 18 will not get the death sentence, but may be imprisoned for life instead. It is no surprise that at least one social-media comment has called for the 16-year-o...

Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . Last Sunday, I attended a Meeting Point organized under the aegis of Mekong Cultural Hub , a global organization that aims to empower diverse cultural practitioners to bring their visions for an inclusive, sustainable Mekong Region to life. The Meeting Point was organized by Singaporean Grace Hong in her home in Astoria, Queens, and in that relaxed setting it introduced to one another a group of 7 people—an art critic, two administrators, two film editors, a poet (me), and a friend. Grace herself writes on art and manages public communications for a gallery in the city. Between all of us, we had ties to Cambodia, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Singapore, and the US. I had visited Cambodia and Vietnam as a tourist not so long ago, but knew little about the contemporary arts around the Mekong, so the 4 short films shown to us were revelatory. In their different ways and locations, the artists in the films depl...

I'm very happy to share with you that an excerpt from my hybrid work of fiction Snow at 5 PM: Translations of an Insignificant Japanese Poet is featured at Poetry Daily today! I hope you will enjoy reading it. Poet and literary critic Vivek Narayanan comments very kindly: "Koh’s work in some moments can seem disarmingly simple, even if always rigorous in its language, lighting on the ordinary, but as you delve further it reveals a rich intelligence, omnivorous and cosmopolitan in its influences, balancing its interests in high and low, the cerebral and the bodily, the experimental and the straight, narrative and ellipsis." ( read the rest of his commentary ) If you'd like to get hold of the book, please consider getting it from Bookshop , as the online store shares its profits with independent bookstores. Or ask your local bookstore for it. Friends in Singapore, I hope to be back and see you next summer.

 Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . After the thunderstorms, they are back in the shady corner of Marcus Garvey Park again, the homeless. They are back with their plastic bags and shopping trolleys, their folding chairs and milk crates. They stand alone or sit in a group under the trees, a tent almost giving up, as if they are camping. They are men and women, black and white, young and old. They shoot up in broad daylight. They share their needles with one another. They talk to each other quietly, mostly. The children have disappeared from the playground nearest to them. They have been visited, once, by two women who looked like social workers. More certainly, they have been visited by an emergency medical team, and an ambulance has taken away one of them, the one who got tired of waiting around. Jee Leong Koh July 8, 2021