Song of a Reformed Headhunter

 I had a lovely, wide-ranging conversation about my book SNOW AT 5 PM with poet Indran Amirthanayagam. Originally from Sri Lanka, which Indran still calls by its older name Ceylon, Indran is a naturalized American who used to work in the diplomatic corp. His own poetry is powerfully influenced by Whitman, O'Hara, and Lorca. 

 Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . Singapore has every reason to be proud of Asymptote , the outstanding journal of literary translation with a monthly global readership of 55,000 for the 1,603 translations published and archived in its ten years of existence. In 2015, Asymptote became the first magazine to receive the London Book Fair Award for International Literary Translation Initiative. The Guardian hosted its high-profile weekly showcases between the period of 2015-2017, winning it and the newspaper even more readers for literary translations. Yet Singapore's National Arts Council has never provided any long-term funding for Asymptote, which is founded and headed by LEE Yew Leong, a Singaporean, and incorporated in Singapore. It is not for the lack of trying on the part of Asymptote. The journal made two major attempts, in 2016, after the London Book Fair Award, and in 2020, to ask for the kind of funding that would susta...

"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...

THL and JEHL: If the city could answer your questions, what would you ask it? Why are these important issues to you? JLK: Will you ever change your survival and authoritarian mentality, which prioritizes economic development and political control above all else? How can you be changed? Will you remember me? And how will you remember me? THL and JEHL: Also let’s consider the reverse. What would your city ask you? Why? JLK: Who are you? Thanks, Tammy Lai-Ming Ho and Jason Eng Hun Lee, for the interview .

"Growing up in Singapore, I was teased by Chinese schoolmates for being a banana, yellow on the outside, white on the inside. They were mocking my love for the English language and my apathy towards Mandarin Chinese. At home my family spoke a mixture of English and Cantonese. Mandarin was for me a school language. The schoolyard teasing turned me off from learning it properly. Now, as if in belated protest against those ancient taunts, I’d like to think of myself as a Chinese writer who writes in English, if only to expand the notion of what a Chinese writer is." Read the interview . Thanks, Jennifer Wong, for interviewing me, and Peter LaBerge, for publishing the interview.

My longest, and last, interview about Steep Tea , with some thoughts on global literature, Singapore Poetry, and the political obligations of a Permanent Resident of the USA. Thanks, Nicholas Wong, for the interview, and Ching-In Chen, for publishing it.

Proud to have my poem "A Whole History" (from Steep Tea ) included in the groundbreaking anthology Bettering American Poetry 2015 . From my interview : "I knew people back home would be pleased and proud that a Singaporean was being published by the esteemed UK publisher Carcanet Press. I wanted people to know, even if they don’t open the book, that this Singaporean is proudly gay. The anti-sodomy law, an inheritance from the British, is still on the books, and the LGBT community in Singapore still faces all kinds of discrimination and prejudice. If the country wishes to embrace my book, it will have to embrace my sexuality. I also self-identify as postcolonial for political reasons. Not only do I wish to assert my independence against the British empire of letters, I also want to protest the neo-colonial apparatuses of oppression inherited and exercised by the Singaporean state. These apparatuses include not only the anti-sodomy law, but also state control of the pre...

The Straits Times published a story about Steep Tea making the list of Best Books of 2015 in the Financial Times . The Singapore paper included only part of the email interview with me. The full interview below. Read it and you will understand ST's selectivity. How does it feel to be one of the four poetry works named by the FT as best of 2015?  Amazed. Humbled. Grateful that someone likes the book so much. We just celebrated Thanksgiving here in the US. I'm so thankful for the encouragement given by Maria Crawford, the FT editor who selected Steep Tea . Looking back, what were some challenges you faced in writing Steep Tea?  I couldn't have written Steep Tea without moving to the US to come out as a poet and a gay man. The poems in the book reflect the experience of finding my rightful place in New York and a useful perspective on Singapore. The poems were written over the course of 12 years, as both place and perspective come slowly. You might say that I had t...

from an interview Philip Roth gave to Daniel Sandstrom, the cultural editor at Svenska Dagbladet, for publication in Swedish translation in that newspaper and in its original English in the NYT Book Review: Whoever looks for the writer's thinking in the words and thoughts of his characters is looking in the wrong direction. Seeking out a writer's "thoughts" violates the richness of the mixture that is the very hallmark of the novel. The thought of the novelist that matters most is the thought that makes him a novelist.  The thought of a novelist lies not in the remarks of his characters or even in their introspection but in the plight he has invented for his characters, in the juxtaposition of those characters, and in the lifelike ramifications of the ensemble they make--their density, their substantiality, their lived existence actualized in all its nuanced particulars, is in fact his thought metabolized.  The thought of the writer lies in his choice of an asp...

The significance of the number seven, the fragmented self, the gay transnational Asian poet, the Singapore poetry scene, self-publication and critical legitimacy, literary awards, and poetry free-for-all... ...in my interview in Lantern Review . The beautiful Wendy Chin-Tanner puts the move on me.

After reading my poem "Study #5: After Frida Kahlo" on the Bench Press website , Cameron Conaway interviewed me for the National Examiner . We spoke about Singapore, Bench Press, writing in poetic forms, and my latest book. Conaway was the 2007-2009 Poet-in-Residence at the University of Arizona's MFA Creative Writing Program. A mixed martial artist, he is the author of "Caged: Memoir of a Cage-Fighting Poet," (forthcoming Fall 2011 from Tuttle Publishing). He currently resides in Bangkok.

Almost two years ago I was interviewed by George Spencer and shot for TV by Mitch Corber for the Poetry Thin Air Cable Show. I wrote about that experience here . The show was broadcast first on Manhattan Network TV, and then on the Brooklyn one. Miriam Stanley was the second interviewee on it. Mitch has just uploaded the show on YouTube, and so now you can watch me whenever you like, reading poems from Payday Loans and Equal to the Earth , and sounding agonizingly slow. I made such weird facial expressions when reading and answering George, but the star is really my teeth. I guess that is how I look all the time, unbeknownst to me. This one is for the archive.

Wendy Chin-Tanner interviews me at The Nervous Breakdown on self-publishing my poetry. Why do it? How do it? It's all, mostly, there. I also thank John Stahle, Andrew Howdle, Vijay Seshadri, Marie Howe, Christopher Hennessey, Lawrence Schimel, and Natasha Trethewey, for their help along the way.

In To Views features a brief interview with me. It may be a fun interview to read. *

In Scottish poet Rob A. Mackenzie's debut book of poems, "opposites collide--reality and delusion, political activism and apathy, friend and enemy, life and death." The voice that registers these collisions is by turns satirical, probing, tender, and always entertaining. He stops at this blog for the final stop of his virtual book tour to answer some questions. You can read here a good number of the poems we discuss. Jee: At an earlier stop on your book tour, you said that you spent quite a bit of time deciding on the first and last poems of the collection. “Light Storms from a Dark Country” is a strong atmospheric start to the book, to my mind. “Freak lightning tears its jack-knife/ through the sky” is such a menacing image. What made you decide to begin your first book with this poem? The last poem “The Scuffle” is, aptly, about endings. What is it about a fox attacking a teabag in a garden that makes it so attractive as the book’s final image? Rob: Quite a few poem...

Apology: The network lost the DVD and so did not broadcast the program. My apologies to everyone who tried to catch the show. I will let you know if I have a new date.  * I am reading my poetry on the Poetry Thin Air Cable Show, revived by George Spencer and Mitch Corber. The program will be broadcast on Manhattan Neighborhood Network Channel 67, this Wednesday between 12:30-1:00 AM (EST). If you don't get MNN Ch 67, don't worry. You can get the internet stream by following the instructions below. PC USERS 1. Download Windows Media Player here 2. Click on your channel 67 stream, here MAC USERS 1. Download Windows Media Player here 2. Download Flip4Mac Player for QuickTime viewing here 3. Also download VLC media player from this page 4. Now, click on your channel 67 stream, here Note: Try it now, or well before the show starts. P.S. Any connection problems, email Mitch Corber Tuesday evening 9–11 pm (thinairvideo@earthlink.net). He will offer 1-on-1 phone support, so leave him ...