Song of a Reformed Headhunter

"For some reason I cannot pin down, I go to the word “soft” often in my poetry. It does not only speak, it also touches and tastes, and it does all this while meaning, variously, listen, gentle, vulnerable, honest, subtle, strong, tender, comfortable, pre-erection, post-orgasm, receptive, sympathetic, malleable, formal, transformative. It is not the opposite of hard, but is a state of hardness, just as hard is but a state of softness. It appears in conjunction with “ware,” “water,” and “power.”" Pleased to be included in this special Singapore feature of the Portugal-based journal Jogos Florais. Shout-outs in my interview to Tan Pin Pin, Sonny Liew, Gwee Li Sui, Dorothy Wang, Timothy Yu, Jahan Ramazani, and Gina Apostol. And thanks, Marguerita, for sharing your story with me. Your poem has appeared! Poems and interviews by Angeline Yap, Anne Lee Tzu Pheng, Cyril Wong, Edwin Thumboo, Jee Leong Koh, Loh Guan Liang, Pooja Nansi, Shirley Geok-lIn Lim, Tania De Rozario, and...

A whirlwind of events these past two weeks. First, AWP at Portland, Oregon, (March 28-30), where I tabled for Gaudy Boy, and all three of our authors—Alfian Sa'at, Lawrence Ypil, and Jenifer Park—signed books, and read at an off-site event. Alfian also participated in panel titled "Innovations in Southeast Asia" with Gina Apostol and Laurel Fantauzzo, moderated by Larry Ypil. I read at Literaoke at Chopsticks Karaoke Lounge and Bar, and that was quite fun. Then the New York launch of Larry and Jenifer's books at the Asian American Writers' Workshop on Thursday, April 4. The launch went really well. The house was full and the books—15 copies per author—were sold out. Larry and Jenifer read very well and were full of thoughtful and memorable reflections during the Q&A. As Judy Luo remarked, our poets have personalities! And then the Second Saturdays gathering on April 6, hosted by C and M at their Harlem home. About 35 people came. Potluck, mingling, drinkin...

Weekly column written for Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . "All art is propaganda, and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists," declared W.E.B. Du Bois, the African American philosopher and civil rights leader, in "Criteria for Negro Art" (1926). The trenchant declaration captures a vital truth about the function of literature in directing the sympathies of the reader. Being somewhat priggish and not a little puristical, I confess to feeling uncomfortable with the word "propaganda," feeling as I do the Singaporean state's output of feel-good songs, images, and 'news' as a rash. Was it the element of 'propaganda' in Terrance Hayes's American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin that disappointed my high hopes? The poems are tremendously inventive and musical, but the matter and treatment of the murders of young black men in America is... too obvious? Too easy a play for the sympathies of the r...

Friday night—watched first 3 episodes of the series Atlanta . Good script but uneven acting. GH hated it. The black body as brute and brutalized, as tender and tenderness. Saturday night—Gina Apostol read from INSURRECTO for Second Saturdays. She began a little unsteadily, as I've seen her do at other readings, and then she settled into it and delivered a passionate voicing of the many characters in her novel. The novel restores my faith in the literary form, in its capacity to revisit the atrocities of history and not merely to recount them, but to re-view them. The colonizer is in me just as I am in my colonizer. There is an essential mystery to the large-scale horrors of history, just as there is to final act of the suicide. Sunday—The Met's "Epic Abstraction" show was a big disappointment. After two gigantic rooms of Pollocks and Rothkos, one of this and one of that, in a misguided attempt to show the influence of Abstract Expressionism beyond American shores ...

A weekly column written for Singapore Unbound's e-newsletter. Sign up here .  Dueling Narratives About Colonial Rule In the early morning of September 28, 1901, Filipino revolutionaries, led by local police chief Valeriano Abanador, attacked the American garrison stationed in Balangigi, on the island of Samar. They killed 36 and wounded 22 in action. In retaliation, the Americans swept through the island, burning villages and killing anyone, men and women, above the age of 10. Their order was to make Samar "a howling wilderness." Estimates of the number of casualties range from 2,500 to 50,000. In her new novel INSURRECTO, Gina Apostol approaches this historical incident of colonial brutality through the dueling narratives of an American filmmaker and her Filipino translator. In the process Apostol also tells the stories of women artists and revolutionaries, daughters and lovers, coming to an understanding of the truth of their lives, including one Casian...

Second day of summer break. Worked on Does grass sweat . Met Gina Apostol and young Filipino literary scholar Paul Nadal for dinner at Chomp Chomp.

2nd Singapore Lit Fest ended on a high note on Saturday, with scholarly and passionate talks about Sonny Liew's The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye . I hope the panel is the first of many, many to come because the graphic novel rewards close analysis and open discussion. A favorite moment was when two panelists, Ying Sze Pek and Matt Humphreys, disagreed with one another. Is the depiction of Lim Chin Siong and Lee Kuan Yew as hero and villian an instance of the novel's oversimplification of complex people, or is it part of the novel's sentimentalist structure? Is it, in other words, a fault or a a strength? Another favorite moment in the festival is less of a clash and more of a clarification, when Alfian Sa'at asks Jason Koo whether he means "mean as fuck" or "mean ASS fuck" in a discussion about the depiction of race and sexuality in literature. Ha, ha, literature is full of double entendres. Then there was that awkward moment in the "Fictionali...

I've been trying to catch up with myself. Classes were over by June 10, but the very next week I taught my first summer poetry writing workshop for high school students, titled brashly The Complete Poet. It was/is open to students from my school and elsewhere, but as it turned out, only two students from my school signed up, both of whom had studied with me. Although the enrollment was tiny, I went ahead with the course. Better to get the ball rolling than to wait at the start line, to mix my metaphors. I'm so glad I did. We had a great time reading a poet a day, writing poems inspired by the poet, and workshopping the poems. First day, we read Kay Ryan's New and Selected called The Best of It . We discussed her use of nature for metaphor and commentary, and her spin on common idioms. Second day, we read Brian Turner's Here Bullet , about his experience fighting as an American soldier in the Iraq war. Here we focused on his use of Arabic as a way of understanding and mi...

Last night at Asian American Writers' Workshop, I heard Leila Chudori read from her newly translated novel Home , followed by Vicente Rafael reading from Benedict Anderson's memoir A Life Beyond Boundaries . The discussion was moderated by Gina Apostol. Rafael, a former student of Anderson's, and Professor of History at the University of Washington, was really sharp. In his reading, he put together a collage of extracts that focused on the role of luck in a life. According to Rafael, Anderson once noted that "luck" does not appear in the index at the back of any scholarly book: it is outside the boundaries of academic inquiry. If Benedict was not expelled from Indonesia for contradicting the Suharto regime's explanation of the 1965 massacre, he would not have lived in Thailand and the Philippines, and written his innovative comparative study on nationalism, Imagined Communities . During the Q&A, Rafael explained Anderson's ideas very succinctly in resp...

Dear Friends, We are excited to announce the return of Singapore Literature Festival in New York City. The theme this year is Singapore Unbound. Started in 2014, the biennial festival brings together Singaporean and American authors for in-depth conversations about literature and society. The inaugural festival, attended by more than 500 people, was very warmly received. Attendees formed personal connections to the writers whom they heard. This year we aim to raise USD15 000 for the festival and we ask you to consider making a generous gift. The 2 nd Singapore Literature Festival in NYC will be held from September 28 – 30, 2016. Award-winning authors Alfian Sa’at and Ovidia Yu will fly from Singapore to New York to present their trailblazing fiction, poetry, and plays. They will be joined by Singaporean and American authors and artistes based in the US, including Jessica Hagedorn , Gina Apostol , Naomi Jackson , Jeremy Tiang , Marcus Yi , Mei-Ann Teo , and Jason Wee . Our p...