Song of a Reformed Headhunter

I first met Rachael Briggs on-line, over at the internet poetry workshop Poetry Free-for-all. I have been a workshop member for years, even before I moved to the States in 2003. When Rachael found us and started posting her poems for critique, I was drawn to her voice (witty, interrogative, unafraid) and her artful ways with poetic forms. Once PFFA opened its Collaboration Ark, she and I decided to enter Howard's ship and write a renga (Japanese linked form) together. At that time, having moved from upstate NY, she was living in Australia, and so was leading an expatriate life, as I was, and still am, in NYC. She loved the natural environment down under, and many exotic animals, birds and plants soon found their way into her poetry. We thought we could carry our antipodean seasonal references into the renga, and thus convey the enormous distance that was covered by our collaboration. The renga "Steep Tea" has become the title poem of my new book. We enjoyed writing ...

Thanks, Akshita Nanda, for the feature in Singapore's Straits Times: Poet Koh Jee Leong Had to Leave Singapore to Engage with It  Shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize for English poetry last November, Jee Leong Koh says he ironically found his voice only after leaving the country in 2003 to study in the United States. He lives in Manhattan with his partner, teaching in a private school, but continues to engage with Singapore in his critically acclaimed verse. Take the collection Steep Tea, to be published in July by UK publisher Carcanet Press. It is partly Koh's response to women poets such as Ireland's Eavan Boland or American Rachael Briggs, who co-wrote the titular poem as a call-and-response Japanese "renga" form. The collection also includes Koh's reactions and thoughts on Singaporean icons such as the old KTM Railway Station at Tanjong Pagar and poet Lee Tzu Pheng's well-known and much-discussed poem about life here, My Country A...

The wonderful poet Rachael Briggs read and recorded the entire divan of 49 ghazals that concludes my book Seven Studies for a Self Portrait . What a feat and honor! The hero of the ghazals is a man whom I dated only twice, but fell head-over-heels for. The ghazals, however, are also crowded with other lovers. In her dramatic reading, Rachael teased out a great variety of tones and moods. Find a comfy seat. The whole reading takes only 1 hour, 12 minutes and 43 seconds. Let Rachael Briggs take you through "A Lover's Recourse." https://dl.dropboxusercontent. com/u/17337066/A%20Lover%27s% 20Recourse.mp3

Steep Tea A Traditional Autumn Kasen Renga Started: August 25, 2012 Finished: September 11, 2012 Written by Rachael Briggs and Jee Leong Koh sunset steeps the world in red red maple, apple, bee balm bloom we sip jewel tea the fire temple disappears a watery moon chili dip on a seaweed cracker thesis antithesis crunch oral defence  visiting mum in Syracuse   cherry blossoms soft artillery that liquefies in my hand ... or was it snow? recategorized from 4C to 442  swear unqualified allegiance to ...  (le) poisson rouge  Taka Kigawa  Die Kunst der Fuge  alien fauna of George Street a kangaroo with gears for ears you on the  exercise bike, come share  my yoga mat  can we be Lion and Thunderbolt, Hero and King Dancer? I'm in! Mount Fuji  the dance  before the dance  my skipping stone cavorts between dust and river bottom the moon  cools her feet  in a red basin...

xxxxx I won’t lie— the cats bothered me. There were four of them— xxxxx three shaggy black ones and a ginger— but they seemed more. They nosed around the yard xxxxx like a party of scouts. They measured the top of the fence in steps in both directions. xxxxx They mewed and were answered. I watched and watched for the others until night xxxxx made it impossible to count for sure. Day brought back the cats and their number. One xxxxx short of the fingers on a hand. Two short of ten if the number of the creatures were doubled. xxxxx Eight short of twenty if they were tripled. If they were multiplied by five, there would be twenty xxxxx but where were the other sixteen hiding? I caught the ginger staring at me through the window xxxxx the morning before the cats disappeared. I watched and watched but they did not come back. xxxxx I lost four cats but they had seemed more. for Rachael Briggs

Read on Sunday night with Ocean Vuong at JujoMukti Tea Lounge in the East Village, at a reading series curated by David Lawton. We read a poem each in turns, and the poems played off each other wonderfully. An electrifying moment happened when Ocean read his self-portrait as Jeffrey Dahmer, and then I read my self-portrait after Frida Kahlo. The body broken and eaten becomes the body put back together and giving nourishment. A number of friends came for the reading, Linda Lerner, Miriam Stanley, Jackie Sheeler, and Brant Lyon. GH was there too. Rachael Briggs also came, and read two witty poems written during NaPoWriMo. She, GH and I had dinner afterwards at the Polish diner, Odessa. I sold two books at the reading and traded with Ocean.