Song of a Reformed Headhunter

A short essay on revising, or not, a published poem. I cogitated on "To a Young Poet." Thanks, Joshua Ip and Sing Lit Station, for inviting me to contribute my thoughts to TRACK CHANGES .

I was one of three poets (with Ng Yi-Sheng and Grace Chia) roped in to offer comments on the first manuscripts of 6 new Singapore poets.The session was part of a manuscript bootcamp organized by the indefatigable Joshua Ip. It was a pleasure to engage with the work of Amanda Chong, Daryl Lim, David Wong, Jennifer Anne Champion, Samuel Lee, and Tse Hao Guang, and to have an open and collegial discussion about poetry. The poets will receive much feedback from different people over the weekend, some of it conflicting, some of it confusing, but at the end of the day, we must be our own toughest critics, if we are going to write the kind of poetry that will stand the test of time. Thanks, Josh, for organizing this working group. Thanks too to Sarah for opening your home to us.

Judges Gwee Li Sui, Leong Liew Geok and Boey Kim Cheng awarded the 2014 Singapore Literature Prize (English poetry category) to Joshua Ip and Yong Shu Hoong. On the morning of hearing the result, I was very disappointed. While I was turning the disappointment over in my mind on my way to school, a jogger, silver-haired, in his fifties, ran past me without shoes. a sore loser i'd start writing in spanish if i can run barefoot

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.

Math Paper Press re-issues my first book of poems Payday Loans in a beautiful new edition designed by Shellen Teh, with a new critical preface by Joshua Ip and an interview with me conducted by Chloe Miller for Eclectica Magazine. To launch the book, I read at BooksActually's reading series "An Evening with..." on Saturday, July 26. Ian Chung moderated the session, asking me questions about each of my books that I read from. I was really pleased to see familiar and new faces in the audience. I won't remember everyone, so my apologies in advance, but here are the faces that flash across my mind: Robert Yeo, Leong Liew Geok, Toh Hsien Min, Zhang Ruihe, Shawn Chua, Tania De Rozario and her lovely partner, Chong Li Chuan, Boedi Widjaja and his gracious wife, Weetz and his partner .... Shawn took the photo of me and Kenny's cat.

Open Letter Regarding the National Library’s Book Ban What the National Library has done—banning, and pulping, three children’s books because they depict untraditional families—horrifies and saddens me. I love the National Library, first in its original Stamford Road edition, and then in its modern translation in Bras Basah, for its vast repository of knowledge and pleasure. But the “generous giver,” as poet Edwin Thumboo calls it in his poem on the old library, has now taken away with a closed fist, and not just taken away, but will destroy the books. I feel the destruction on the pulse because I identify as gay. All the ways in which the state, supported by an apparent majority of citizens, criminalize and discriminate against the LGBT community have not hit home as hard as this act of vandalism. The object to be pulped is so innocuous. And Tango Makes Three , one of the three books, is about a pair of male penguins hatching an egg and caring for the chick. ...