This is Part Six of SP’s first “Special Focus” series, looking at the extraordinary gardening poems of Leong Liew Geok. Born in Penang, Malaysia, Leong moved to Singapore in 1981. Thereafter, she published two important collections of poems, Love Is Not Enough (1991) and Women without Men (2000). The gardening poems in her second book represent a signal achievement in Singapore poetry. Alternating between lyrics and dramatic monologues, they are a sustained engagement with the cultivation of both self and environment. Appearing every Thursday, the series will end with the publication of a new gardening poem by Leong. Photographs taken by the poet provide intimate glimpses of her garden and, by extension, Singapore, the Garden City.

The Gardener’s Had Enough
by Leong Liew Geok

The watering heads leak,
The sprayer won’t work
And dirt under your nails
Continues to lurk.

Mould on the soil spreads
A smothering grey slime
Waiting to be scraped off;
It won’t be lost in time.

The bonsai needs repotting
So clear are the signs
Of malnutrition —
For fresh soil it pines.

My orchids are clogged
With seeds of palms overhead
While weeds root and overrun
Lawn and flower bed.

No plant respects me
Enough to behave,
My shrubs blindly branching,
Pursuing a shave.

You’ll understand why
After the pots are counted,
They encroach upon me
And make me disgusted.

If you do not stoop,
A torchlight in action,
To kill off the snails,
Morning is destruction.

Cease giving chances,
You’ve nothing to lose —
Throw the unblooming out,
They simply must choose.

Stop buying and adding,
You’ve more than enough
For one jungle-nursery
Stocked with green stuff.

That gardening’s a business
Is matter of fact;
No plant’s irreplaceable,
There’s nothing to regret.

There’s no meeting point
Between the living and dying:
Either you, or your plants expire,
Though you don’t feel like watering.

So be it if dead:
There are fewer to mind
And less work around
Of the backbreaking kind.

No more orchids; no more shrubs.
No more snails or other bugs.
No more jasmine-scented air,
No cacti to stab or dare.

No cause left to grumble,
Mutter about or berate.
Life would be deadly, dire,
With zero to recreate.

Reprinted with the kind permissions of author and Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Pte Ltd, the poem “The Gardener’s Had Enough” first appeared in Women without Men (Times Books International, 2000).

Read Cyril Wong on why he loves this poem.

Born in Penang, Malaysia, Leong Liew Geok has lived in Singapore since 1981. She is the author of Love is Not Enough (1991) and Women without Men (2000). She edited More than Half the Sky: Creative Writings by Thirty Singaporean Women (1998; repr. 2009 ) and Literary Singapore: A directory of contemporary writing in Singapore (2011) for the National Arts Council. She taught at the Department of English Language and Literature, National University of Singapore from 1981-2002. More recently, her poems have appeared online in Softblow Poetry Journal and Blue Lyra Review. She is (still!) working on her third collection of poems, envisaged for publication in 2016.

Phalaenopsis orchids tied to, and growing on, the branches of Bauhinia blakeana, commonly known as the Butterfly Tree or Hong Kong Orchid Tree. Photo by Leong Liew Geok.

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The intent of Singapore Poetry’s “Special Focus” series is to highlight an important aspect of the work of an established poet of Singapore. This aspect may be a thematic thread or a formal preoccupation; it will provide a vital way into the poet’s writings. By making available a substantial selection of poems, SP hopes to encourage both readerly and critical immersion in the poet’s body of work. We begin to see connections, reiterations and reformulations that are missed in reading just one poem.

Zones
by Ellen Redbird

“Don’t you have city planners?” she asked.
Los Angeles sprawl was not built all in one go.
She told me of parks and gardens in Singapore,
school uniforms, and diving
to study the coral reef: barrel sponges, colorful nudibranchs.
I wanted to make her a Halloween costume.
“I don’t know. Maybe I could be a water bear?”

Unlike me, she enjoyed roller coasters.
“It’s good to get out of one’s comfort zone.”
I responded that, because of my chronic pain,
I’m already out of my comfort zone—so any time I’m
comfortable, I get excited. She laughed but
said she guessed it made sense.

When I was dizzy and scared to walk up a
steep spine of sandstone at Arches National Park,
she told me I could do it, and I did.
We sat under the cool shadow of an arch
and stared out at the desert plain.
Swallows swooped up to holes in rock.
On the trail, she spoke Mandarin to some people
who needed directions. I liked the way it sounded.

Was it in my own country that
she held me (July snow
in the Rocky Mountains),
sitting up in bed to look out the window—lightning
pulsed the night’s nervous system.

The last time I saw her, we perched on a California bluff
overlooking the Pacific, across the great inconceivable
arc of which was her well-planned island. She said,
“You were a good first girlfriend.”

Ellen Redbird is a California poet and playwright with an MFA in Writing & Poetics from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, Naropa University. She runs Pyriform Press (www.pyriformpress.com) and edits the journal Nerve Lantern: Axon of Performance Literature. Her poems and performance texts have appeared in journals, including Tarpaulin Sky, Chain, Bombay Gin, For Immediate Release, and Score. She wrote and directed Verve of Verge: a puzzle play (2010), and an excerpt from her manuscript Unrequited Symbiosis: a Mitochondrial Mistranslation & Underwater Opera was performed in New York City as part of the poets theater night of the eighth annual Welcome to Boog City Poetry, Music, and Theater Festival (2014).

For details of The Singapore Poetry Contest, see here.

This is Part Seven of SP’s first “Special Focus” series, looking at the extraordinary gardening poems of Leong Liew Geok. Born in Penang, Malaysia, Leong moved to Singapore in 1981. Thereafter, she published two important collections of poems, Love Is Not Enough (1991) and Women without Men (2000). The gardening poems in her second book represent a signal achievement in Singapore poetry. Alternating between lyrics and dramatic monologues, they are a sustained engagement with the cultivation of both self and environment. Appearing every Thursday, the series will end with the publication of a new gardening poem by Leong. Photographs taken by the poet provide intimate glimpses of her garden and, by extension, Singapore, the Garden City.

Gingko and Bottlebrush
by Leong Liew Geok

In a ball of Californian soil,
This sapling was a gift, hand-carried
And airborne, its veined, lobed fans a muted
Sheen. Though living in half-shade, the leaves
Dried and curled a papery brown
To fall. The gingko spine clots
At the nodes. Months have passed;
Shock as well. Little knobs of brown
So clenched, wait on their skeletal
Sentinel for spring’s trigger to crack
Buds green — though winter hasn’t been.

Out of its clear and dry habitat,
the bottlebrush grows taller, and languishes
With branch by branch of foliage
For inflorescence, its several flowers
A punctuation for the green prose
Of adoptive land. To see Australian blooms
Brush shrub or tree a great great
Red, spiking the outback green of leaves
With soft stamens, is to know
From the spread red lavishes —
Transplanted callistemon as parenthesis.

Reprinted with the kind permissions of author and Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Pte Ltd, the poem “Gingko and Bottlebrush” first appeared in Women without Men (Times Books International, 2000).

Born in Penang, Malaysia, Leong Liew Geok has lived in Singapore since 1981. She is the author of Love is Not Enough (1991) and Women without Men (2000). She edited More than Half the Sky: Creative Writings by Thirty Singaporean Women (1998; repr. 2009 ) and Literary Singapore: A directory of contemporary writing in Singapore (2011) for the National Arts Council. She taught at the Department of English Language and Literature, National University of Singapore from 1981-2002. More recently, her poems have appeared online in Softblow Poetry Journal and Blue Lyra Review. She is (still!) working on her third collection of poems, envisaged for publication in 2016.

Photo of Frangipanni (Plumeria rubra) by Leong Liew Geok

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The intent of Singapore Poetry’s “Special Focus” series is to highlight an important aspect of the work of an established poet of Singapore. This aspect may be a thematic thread or a formal preoccupation; it will provide a vital way into the poet’s writings. By making available a substantial selection of poems, SP hopes to encourage both readerly and critical immersion in the poet’s body of work. We begin to see connections, reiterations and reformulations that are missed in reading just one poem.

Gifts
by Sue Hyon Bae

1703: Singapura offered to British Alexander Hamilton as a gift
—Singapura: 700 Years, National Museum of Singapore

A white English couple, boiled pink
in khaki shorts, takes a photo of me
drinking kopi peng from a plastic baggie.

They must think me a dash
of local flavor, on display
for free, instead of a tourist,

more or less like them, rushing
to finish my drink before the bus comes,
taking in as much as I can

of what this city gives me: this sweet
heavy coffee, the green wind, white spider lilies
growing like weeds, the broad flat canopies

of what Alvin calls raintrees, the spire
of a Hindu temple peeking over the walls
of a Buddhist temple, and, lovingly displayed

at a museum, a broken white and green plate,
the biggest piece cradling the smaller fragments.
I carry the tenderness away with me,

this Korean American, out of place
in both Korea and America; here
no one looks at me as if I don’t belong.

That, too, is a gift.

Sue Hyon Bae grew up in South Korea, Malaysia, and Texas. She is an MFA candidate at Arizona State University and international editor for Hayden’s Ferry Review, and for six weeks in the summer of 2015 co-taught a creative writing workshop at NUS. Her work appears in Minetta Review, Riding Light, Please Hold Magazine, and others.

For details of The Singapore Poetry Contest, see here.

This is Part Eight of SP’s first “Special Focus” series, looking at the extraordinary gardening poems of Leong Liew Geok. Born in Penang, Malaysia, Leong moved to Singapore in 1981. Thereafter, she published two important collections of poems, Love Is Not Enough (1991) and Women without Men (2000). The gardening poems in her second book represent a signal achievement in Singapore poetry. Alternating between lyrics and dramatic monologues, they are a sustained engagement with the cultivation of both self and environment. Appearing every Thursday, the series will end with the publication of a new gardening poem by Leong. Photographs taken by the poet provide intimate glimpses of her garden and, by extension, Singapore, the Garden City.

The Gardener Returns
by Leong Liew Geok

The plants from last month’s nursery
Not yet potted, I turn the soil.
It’s better than clearing paper deadlines
That can’t be met. In rainy weather,
The sodden ground makes clutching weeds
Easy victims. And soil that’s thrown
Out clods and stones flows like grain
Through my caked fingers.

As shovel slices through, I dream of this week’s
Nursery, more plants to visit — and pay for —
When earth and deadlines are strewn
With multitudes still untransplanted.
No matter. I squat to shove pens
And papers out for grit in a lover’s hands.

Reprinted with the kind permissions of author and Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Pte Ltd, the poem “The Gardener Returns” first appeared in Women without Men (Times Books International, 2000).

Born in Penang, Malaysia, Leong Liew Geok has lived in Singapore since 1981. She is the author of Love is Not Enough (1991) and Women without Men (2000). She edited More than Half the Sky: Creative Writings by Thirty Singaporean Women (1998; repr. 2009 ) and Literary Singapore: A directory of contemporary writing in Singapore (2011) for the National Arts Council. She taught at the Department of English Language and Literature, National University of Singapore from 1981-2002. More recently, her poems have appeared online in Softblow Poetry Journal and Blue Lyra Review. She is (still!) working on her third collection of poems, envisaged for publication in 2016.

Photo of Lobster Claw (Heliconia rostrata) by Leong Liew Geok

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The intent of Singapore Poetry’s “Special Focus” series is to highlight an important aspect of the work of an established poet of Singapore. This aspect may be a thematic thread or a formal preoccupation; it will provide a vital way into the poet’s writings. By making available a substantial selection of poems, SP hopes to encourage both readerly and critical immersion in the poet’s body of work. We begin to see connections, reiterations and reformulations that are missed in reading just one poem.

At the Dentist in Michigan
by Inez Tan

I have to touch the red
velcro strap holding the mirror
to the chair, so much
like the one I used
to bind the textbooks I clutched
to my navy school pinafore
that I think it must be
a trick, so something or someone
ought to vanish.

I keep half my possessions
at my parents’ address
in Singapore, I keep
seeing things
where they don’t belong.

Inez Tan grew up in Singapore and the United States, where she is currently pursuing an MFA in fiction at the University of Michigan. Her writing has appeared in Fare Forward and The Irish Literary Review, and has won an Honorable Mention in Glimmer Train.

For details of The Singapore Poetry Contest, see here.

This is Part Nine of SP’s first “Special Focus” series, looking at the extraordinary gardening poems of Leong Liew Geok. Born in Penang, Malaysia, Leong moved to Singapore in 1981. Thereafter, she published two important collections of poems, Love Is Not Enough (1991) and Women without Men (2000). The gardening poems in her second book represent a signal achievement in Singapore poetry. Alternating between lyrics and dramatic monologues, they are a sustained engagement with the cultivation of both self and environment. Appearing every Thursday, the series will end with the publication of a new gardening poem by Leong. Photographs taken by the poet provide intimate glimpses of her garden and, by extension, Singapore, the Garden City.

Equatorial
by Leong Liew Geok

We were born into this:
Clogged pores, clammy limbs,
Sweat which itches and stains
Collars and armpits, souring nostrils.
Wrapped in blanket sheath,
Plants aren’t pierced by ice
And trees don’t save for spring;
A yellow sun burns harder,
Foliage throws a greener rash;
Fruit and flower clash for brightness
And rain’s soap opera, the monsoon,
Drenches us into missing the sun.

Wet or dry, we use walkways, porches,
Umbrellas, trees whose shades —
Probed by tentacles of heat —
We swelter in. Let tourists bake
Themselves on sand. We love our
Air-conditioned places, at least
Till evening draws the sun-shy
And the breeze, if there,
Takes the humid out of circulation.
Through day, by night, the nature
In which termites breed unseen
And appetites cease only for death
Takes no rest: the equatorial floods
Profligate air, saturating.

Reprinted with the kind permissions of author and Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Pte Ltd, the poem “Equatorial” first appeared in Women without Men (Times Books International, 2000).

Born in Penang, Malaysia, Leong Liew Geok has lived in Singapore since 1981. She is the author of Love is Not Enough (1991) and Women without Men (2000). She edited More than Half the Sky: Creative Writings by Thirty Singaporean Women (1998; repr. 2009 ) and Literary Singapore: A directory of contemporary writing in Singapore (2011) for the National Arts Council. She taught at the Department of English Language and Literature, National University of Singapore from 1981-2002. More recently, her poems have appeared online in Softblow Poetry Journal and Blue Lyra Review. She is (still!) working on her third collection of poems, envisaged for publication in 2016.

Photo of White Ixora, after rain, by Leong Liew Geok

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The intent of Singapore Poetry’s “Special Focus” series is to highlight an important aspect of the work of an established poet of Singapore. This aspect may be a thematic thread or a formal preoccupation; it will provide a vital way into the poet’s writings. By making available a substantial selection of poems, SP hopes to encourage both readerly and critical immersion in the poet’s body of work. We begin to see connections, reiterations and reformulations that are missed in reading just one poem.

This is Part Ten of SP’s first “Special Focus” series, looking at the extraordinary gardening poems of Leong Liew Geok. Born in Penang, Malaysia, Leong moved to Singapore in 1981. Thereafter, she published two important collections of poems, Love Is Not Enough (1991) and Women without Men (2000). The gardening poems in her second book represent a signal achievement in Singapore poetry. Alternating between lyrics and dramatic monologues, they are a sustained engagement with the cultivation of both self and environment. Appearing every Thursday, the series will end with the publication of a new gardening poem by Leong. Photographs taken by the poet provide intimate glimpses of her garden and, by extension, Singapore, the Garden City.

The Gardener Gets High
by Leong Liew Geok

Hispid thumbs and fingers,
Or knuckled fists for leaves;
One glance at spines teeming
And you’d think thrice to touch
Rosettes with spikes, tufted glochids;
Barbs, areoled ribs. Sunseekers
Like these find thirst selfish,
Rude. They’d rot from overwatering.

In orange, lemon, cherry or pink,
their blooms stun with stuck-on looks.
How hoary! hispidilous! hirsute!
An enclave — one hundred pots
Sitting in my garden, courting
Tropic greenness with phallic deserts.

Reprinted here with the kind permissions of author and Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Pte Ltd, the poem “The Gardener Gets High” first appeared in Women without Men (Times Books International, 2000).

Born in Penang, Malaysia, Leong Liew Geok has lived in Singapore since 1981. She is the author of Love is Not Enough (1991) and Women without Men (2000). She edited More than Half the Sky: Creative Writings by Thirty Singaporean Women (1998; repr. 2009 ) and Literary Singapore: A directory of contemporary writing in Singapore (2011) for the National Arts Council. She taught at the Department of English Language and Literature, National University of Singapore from 1981-2002. More recently, her poems have appeared online in Softblow Poetry Journal and Blue Lyra Review. She is (still!) working on her third collection of poems, envisaged for publication in 2016.

Part of Leong Liew Geok’s cactus and succulent collection (showing species of agave, aloe, astrophytum, cephalocereus, euphorbia, faucaria, gasteria, haworthia, pachypodium, rebutia, stapelia, etc.). Photo by Leong.

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The intent of Singapore Poetry’s “Special Focus” series is to highlight an important aspect of the work of an established poet of Singapore. This aspect may be a thematic thread or a formal preoccupation; it will provide a vital way into the poet’s writings. By making available a substantial selection of poems, SP hopes to encourage both readerly and critical immersion in the poet’s body of work. We begin to see connections, reiterations and reformulations that are missed in reading just one poem.

The Middle Ground, a Singapore news website, has started a weekly series of light satirical verse on Southeast Asian current affairs. Scribe Joshua Ip will entertain and inform in his Ipster Cafe. Ip is no lightweight, however. He is the co-winner of the 2015 Singapore Literature Prize for English-language poetry for his witty collection Sonnets from the Singlish. Followers of Singapore Poetry may remember his lovely poem “explaining a thousand cranes” from his second book making love with scrabble tiles. So enjoy this new series from Singapore’s answer to Britain’s Wendy Cope.

The first installment transforms the recent government corruption scandal in Malaysia into a family whodunnit.

Happy Family
by Joshua Ip

The family bought a tub of Walls
And put it in the family fridge
To save up for 1 Magical
Delicious Bread ais krim sandwich… (read more).

Image from The Middle Ground website

This is the final part of SP’s first “Special Focus” series, looking at the extraordinary gardening poems of Leong Liew Geok. Born in Penang, Malaysia, Leong moved to Singapore in 1981. Thereafter, she published two important collections of poems, Love Is Not Enough (1991) and Women without Men (2000). The gardening poems in her second book represent a signal achievement in Singapore poetry. Alternating between lyrics and dramatic monologues, they are a sustained engagement with the cultivation of both self and environment. We end this series with the publication of a new gardening poem by Leong.

The Gardener’s Alphabet
by Leong Liew Geok

A is for aphids, all creamy inside,
B is the bamboo, which roots far and wide.

C is for compost, loosening the soil,
D for the dragon scales clawing brick wall.

E is the earthworm, secret aerator,
F is food for plant health : fertilizer;

G’s for green fingers and groundcover to boot,
H is Heliconia, each sucker a shoot.

I is for insects, as well as insecticide,
J, the jasmine, fragrant and white.

K is for Kopsia, native to this region,
L is the lallang, whose toughness is legion.

M is methylated spirit, for mites, scales and mould,
N is carnivorous Nepenthes, from jungles of our world.

O is for orchids, loved for lasting power,
P is the pruning, so shrubs keep shapely order.

Q is Quisqualis, budding out from its trellis,
R is for roses and rhododendrons, stifled by the tropics.

S is the snail, object of enmity,
T is Tacca, its dark whiskered blooms a curiosity.

U is Umbrella sedge, a papyrus relative,
V is for vines, camouflaging the sensitive.

W is for weeds: recurrent, obnoxious, rampant,
X, Xanthostemon, blooms overwhelmed with stamens;

Y is Yucca, panicles held high, not low,
Z is flowerless Zamia, just leathery leaves to show.

Born in Penang, Malaysia, Leong Liew Geok has lived in Singapore since 1981. She is the author of Love is Not Enough (1991) and Women without Men (2000). She edited More than Half the Sky: Creative Writings by Thirty Singaporean Women (1998; repr. 2009 ) and Literary Singapore: A directory of contemporary writing in Singapore (2011) for the National Arts Council. She taught at the Department of English Language and Literature, National University of Singapore from 1981-2002. More recently, her poems have appeared online in Softblow Poetry Journal and Blue Lyra Review. She is (still!) working on her third collection of poems, envisaged for publication in 2016.

Photo of Bat Lily (Tacca integrifolia) by Leong Liew Geok. “Tacca” in the poem refers, however, to the dark whiskered blooms of the Bat Flower (Tacca chantrieri).

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The intent of Singapore Poetry’s “Special Focus” series is to highlight an important aspect of the work of an established poet of Singapore. This aspect may be a thematic thread or a formal preoccupation; it will provide a vital way into the poet’s writings. By making available a substantial selection of poems, SP hopes to encourage both readerly and critical immersion in the poet’s body of work. We begin to see connections, reiterations and reformulations that are missed in reading just one poem.

“Take Out, Take Home: Footloose Writers on Food and the Sense of Belonging” is the literary arts event of Something To Write Home About, a Singapore arts festival organized wholly by volunteers in New York City to celebrate Singapore’s 50th year of independence. This Sunday, September 13, 7:00 – 9:00 pm, come to NYU’s Kimmel Center (60 Washington Square South) to hear and engage with the most distinctive literary voices coming out of Singapore.

Writers featured include Jee Leong Koh (Author of The Pillow Book and Steep Tea), Amanda Lee Koe (Fiction Editor of Esquire Singapore, Author of Ministry of Moral Panic), Jeremy Tiang (Author of It Never Rains on National Day, Playwright of A Dream of Red Pavilions), Yen Yen Woo and Colin Goh (Pioneers of TalkingCock.com, Creators of Singapore Dreaming and Dim Sum Warriors).

The event is free and open to the public. It concludes a full-day Symposium on Singapore Studies in the same venue. In the symposium, scholars, writers, and arts practitioners will speak on the state of Singaporean society and the arts.

Read the authors’ works before meeting them:

Jee Leong Koh, poem “Eve’s Fault”

Amanda Lee Koe, short story “Panda Cunt, Bear Gall”

Jeremy Tiang, short story “Sophia’s Honeymoon”

Yen Yen Woo, spoken word “Mother Tongue”

Jee Leong Koh, poet and essayist

Amanda Lee Koe, fiction writer and editor

Jeremy Tiang, fiction writer and playwright

Yen Yen Woo and Colin Goh, writers, filmmakers and graphic novelists

The Fried Chicken
by Jennifer Anne Champion

The Fried Chicken was first discovered shortly after the extinction of the Fried Dodo bird.

The Fried Chicken can reach a ground speed of about 15 km/hr and in flight it could reach up to 25 km/hr or more, depending on who’s throwing it.

The Fried Chicken has survived because of its diversity and its ability to adapt.

You can find it in a variety of habitats, for example, a lush, green salad. Or in groups of five or more, as they do in Buffalo. Or occasionally hiding in the tundra of your refrigerator, but not for long.

The Fried Chicken is both solitary and gregarious.

The Fried Chicken should not be confused with the chicken nugget.

Chicken nugget is dead chicken.
The Fried Chicken is alive, with flavour.

Catching The Fried Chicken requires cunning, quick thinking, and crossing the road as good Fried Chicken invariably lives on the other side of your house.

Many purveyors of The Fried Chicken advertise authenticity and tasteful refinement such as to be found in Kentucky.

However, it is useful to note that one cannot be certain one has encountered The Fried Chicken if it does not have a head.

Real Fried Chicken has a head.

And a face.

But the best Fried Chicken, might even have a name.

Now, not many people know this but The Fried Chicken is an endangered speci.
And there have been horrific experiments when it comes to its procreation.

Some experiments have included:
stuffing mushroom
inside bacon
inside The Fried Chicken.

But many experts believe that the only thing that should be stuffed in The Fried Chicken is The Fried Chicken.

And naysayers should just take that chicken and stuff it in their mouths.

It takes one hen to make an egg,
It takes two hands to make an omelette.

The Fried Chicken – nature’s best kept recipe.

Reprinted with permissions from author and publisher, “The Fried Chicken” was first published in A History of Clocks (red wheelbarrow books, 2015).

Jennifer Anne Champion is a writer and performance poet. She has been described by Juice Magazine as gifted with “swift, animated style.” In 2015, she released her first solo work of poetry – A History of Clocks (red wheelbarrow books, 2015). Jennifer’s curatorial essays have also been published by galleries in Italy, Switzerland and Singapore, and her articles have appeared in Esquire Magazine. She is currently working on her second collection of poetry with Math Paper Press titled Caterwaul, due for release in 2016.

I Am A Unicorn (But No One Believes Me)
by Jennifer Anne Champion

The truth is I am a unicorn.
But no one believes me.

People ask, If you’re a unicorn, where’s your horn?
And I’m too embarrassed to tell them how
every other month I trim mine down and sell it to a sinseh.

Even the sinseh looks doubtful,
but I tell him not to judge a unicorn by its horn
or lack thereof.

It’s just keratin.
There are worse things to sell away.
Like your dignity.

The dignity of a unicorn lies in its tail.
The iridescent paleness made richer by stories.
I feed on myth. I nibble on hearsay
Spun from the mouths of my grandparents.

But lately when this unicorn picks up the morning paper,
it makes her sad.

This unicorn licks the sugar cubes meant for her tea.
Finds it all fake and aspartame. This makes her sad.

This unicorn goes to work and teaches children to sing about happy places.
But the children get more cynical each year.
They tell her, ‘cher why you so happy?
This also makes her sad.

Unicorns were made to gallop in fields and ruminate by rivers.

Now this unicorn just tweets like everyone else. Shortens experiences
and life expectancies to one minute rants and carries on.

People ask, If you’re a unicorn, how do you type?
And I’m too sad to remind them that for every question
wrapped in disbelief, another piece of magic falls off.

Soon I will take off my shoes and find I have feet for hooves.
This too will make me sad.

The stories will be replaced with fact.
The facts will be replaced with figures.
My figure may very well be replaced by a number.

One, is a very lonely number indeed.

(Why do rhinos get to be a protected species?)

I am not bitter.
I am a unicorn.

But no one believes in unicorns anymore.

Reprinted with permissions from author and publisher, “I Am A Unicorn (But No One Believes Me)” was first published in SingPoWriMo (Math Paper Press, 2014)

Jennifer Anne Champion is a writer and performance poet. She has been described by Juice Magazine as gifted with “swift, animated style.” In 2015, she released her first solo work of poetry – A History of Clocks (red wheelbarrow books, 2015). Jennifer’s curatorial essays have also been published by galleries in Italy, Switzerland and Singapore, and her articles have appeared in Esquire Magazine. She is currently working on her second collection of poetry with Math Paper Press titled Caterwaul, due for release in 2016.

Bedok Jetty
by Jinat Rehana Begum

At five, I crossed the sea on a dare.
They pestered and pushed, till finally
the youngest of the tribe,
I wobbled onto the long grey finger,
sea to the left of me, sea to the right of me, sea beneath me
crashing, gnashing,
against pillars under the concrete plank,
hungry for young flesh.
Turning green, swaying sick, I turned back.

Don’t look down, bodoh! Look straight!
Cheered by brotherly support,
I edged forward,
taking comfort in tall lampposts and the long
solid metal railings that followed me,
right to the edge of the world,
right to journey’s end, till finally
I stuck a hand victoriously
between the bars of the last metal railing.
Five fat fingers feeling
sea spray and mist.
Holding in my fist
a strange new smell
of salt and fish.

At ten, I whizzed past courting couples
and old men meditating on fish,
rushing on wheels,
right to journey’s end,
right to the last bars,
to spot new ships hiding the horizon,
cargo, tanker, carrier, cruise,
all waiting under sea and sky
spread so low, so close,
I’d stick out my tongue
to taste the clouds.
Wet, salty,

Stinging the eyes,
sweat streaming down my face,
at fifteen, I gave up cycling and ran
up Lucky Heights, round Sennett estate,
under pedestrian tunnels, across the ECP,
through tangled bird sanctuaries,
dancing round cyclists, skaters and babies in prams,
dodging discarded silver tambans and knotted fishing lines,
right to the edge of the world,
right to journey’s end,
right to the final bars,
to breathe in great gulps
the old smell
of salt and fish,
to watch planes fly in and out of Changi,
to laugh
as snapper, grouper, stingray, eel,
played peek-a-boo with fresh young anglers.

At eighteen, I came with noisy friends,
to crouch on prime spots of concrete
beside benches packed with early-bird kiasus
to watch the sun slide behind tall buildings,
to giggle above the babble
at fireworks on National Day,
at trails of pink, red, white, blue, yellow, green,
lighting the ships silhouetted in the dark,
at the smoky odour of sweaty bodies, gunpowder
and barbequed chicken. And still,
to breathe the old smell
of salt and fish.

At twenty, I came
when even the ships were dark with sleep,
when only the orange glow from lampposts
and the bright white moonlight lit the night.
When only an old makcik tuning her portable radio
and her old man fighting with the knots of their flimsy tarp
disturbed the quiet.
Crossing the sea on moonlit white concrete,
I walked right to the edge of the world
right to journey’s end
to breathe the old friendly smell of salt and fish
to say goodbye
against static croons of Sayang Sayang.

And then I searched everywhere,
Crossing different seas on different piers,
for ships that hide horizons,
for silver fish skimming the waves,
for cheering friends,
for the scent of first victories,
that old smell of salt and fish.
The smell of home.

Reprinted by permissions of the author, editors, and publisher, “Bedok Jetty” is collected  in the anthology From Walden to Woodlands: An Anthology of Nature Poems (Ethos Books, 2015), edited by Ow Yeong Wai Kit and Muzakkir Samat, as a Singapore interfaith initiative. The poem was first published in The Straits Times National Day Supplement, 9 August 2008.

Check out the website of From Walden to Woodlands for conversations with fellow environmentalists, writers, and interfaith practitioners. Or join the book’s Facebook community to dialogue with like-minded individuals.

Jinat Rehana Begum has taught Literature and English in primary, secondary and tertiary institutions in Singapore. She studied early nineteenth-century novel reception for her doctorate at the University of York and retains a fascination for the many ways readers shape writers. She began scribbling poetry on the back of used envelopes as a teenager and started to experiment with prose when she bought her first computer. Her first novel, First fires, will be published in November by Ethos Books.

Two young American poets pitched an idea to a small Singapore press. Separated by an enormous distance, but joined by a common enthusiasm, poets and press have given birth to a striking new anthology. Poets on Growth: An Anthology of Poetry and Craft (Math Paper Press) collects reflections by 22 poets, American and Singaporean, on their poetic origins and journeys. As editors Peter LaBerg and Talin Tahajian puts it, “We wanted the whole story: where did poets we admire start, and how many times did they stop? Did they grow up with writing? What kept them writing, what keeps them writing, and what will keep them writing?” The essays are thoughtfully accompanied by poems from the respective authors.

SP is pleased to bring you the essay by American poet Timothy Liu, and one of his poems from the anthology. Liu’s essay is impressive for being so down-to-earth. This attitude, we learn from his essay, is a lesson learned from an important mentor.

My First Poetic Mentor Was A Welshman Named Leslie
by Timothy Liu

Leslie Norris was my first mentor. Fresh off of my mission, I came to BYU with a passion for poetry without actually having read much of it, only Sylvia Plath’s posthumous volume Ariel and a handful of poems I’d encountered as a high-school senior— Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s “Constantly Risking Absurdity” and ballads like “Sir Patrick Spence.” I’d heard that Professor Norris was the official Poet-in-Residence, a non-Mormon transplanted from Wales, so one morning, I stopped by his office with three poems and asked him what he thought. After thumbing through them, he said, “Actually, these are not very good. But that doesn’t matter. I’ve heard about you, and I believe you are a serious poet. That makes you one in ten thousand! Never forget that. Just remember that you are a poet whether you write good poems or bad poems.” I was crushed by his response, rode my bike home in tears. I returned the next day with a new sheaf of poems and asked, “What about these?” After a brief interval that seemed an eternity, he said: “Something has happened to you. These are much better!”

These initial meetings took place in the fall of 1986. In the three short years that followed, I took every course and workshop that Professor Norris taught, from the English Romantics to the Modernists to workshops of every level, even sitting in on his graduate workshop in my senior year. He was religious about his office hours, his open door the most welcome sight as I wandered the halls of the Jesse Knight Humanities Building. He talked to me about poets from a land I still have never visited, about Vernon Watkins, about Dylan Thomas’s famous red and blue notebooks that Thomas kept in his youth and that he mined for the rest of his life. Leslie spoke fondly of his wife Kitty. I remember the support he gave me when I was struggling to come out of the closet; he told me to get out of Utah, to do my graduate work elsewhere, somewhere I could just be free to love whomever I chose. On at least one occasion, Leslie threw me out of his class, felt that I was being too cavalier or pompous in my (dis)regard for the work of other poets. I’d show up at his office door prodigally repentant, full of tears and gratitude for his pardon. He kept things real between us.

At a certain point, Leslie said to me, “It’s time for you to work with some American poets. I have taught you everything that I know. I have reserved a spot for you in Richard Shelton’s workshop at Rattlesnake Mountain in the Tri-Cities. It’s about a ten hour drive from here, so get in your car and go.” It was there that I first met William Stafford and Naomi Shihab Nye. I’ll never forget hearing Stafford read his poem “St. Matthew and All” or Nye reading her poems “The Yellow Glove” and “What Brings Us Out.” There are these moments of initiation into an art form, when the sublime is irrevocably seared into our consciousness. One suddenly feels a certain kind of possibility, a sense that one’s trajectory in life is about to take a turn. The feeling is incremental at first. You read a poem that stays in the mind. You write a poem that impresses others. But then there’s that great leap, Rilke’s injunction to “change your life,” a command that comes from within, not from without. Leslie was merely the midwife, but back then, I never knew how consequential his thoughtful care would turn out to be.

Several months later, I attended my first Writers at Work Conference, then held in Park City, Utah, and sat at the feet of Marvin Bell, Sandra McPherson, and Robely Wilson Jr. among others. I’ll never forget McPherson’s inscription in my paperback copy of her book Patron Happiness: “With belief in your work.” Who knows what these five words meant to her, or how often she might have inscribed them to others. What mattered was that her inscription gave me permission to think about my own future as a poet in a new way. Sometimes, vital support and encouragement comes from without, not within. It’s like we need to know that we can actually do this crazy (a)vocation called Poesy. I remember trying to cozy up to Robely Wilson Jr. (then the Editor of the North American Review), and when I asked “Robely” what publishing advice he had for young aspiring writers, he said, “That’s easy: never assume you have a relationship with someone when you don’t.” Ouch. So much for my initial forays into the art of the schmooze. At some point, I enrolled in a workshop taught by Tess Gallagher when she came through Salt Lake. The cult of Tess, Raymond Carver’s widow. And the shock of hearing her read a poem like “Cougar Meat.” The fetish of having her sign a clothbound copy of Amplitude: New and Selected Poems, the red- copper foil embossed on the cover blazing beneath the jacket.

All these pleasures I faithfully reported to Leslie, and upon graduation, he said to me: “I think you should go work with Philip Levine—he has something to teach you.” And so I headed off to New Harmony, Indiana, to work with Levine for a couple of weeks prior to entering grad school at the University of Houston. As it turns out, I didn’t win Mr. Levine’s approbation, rather his censure for being “a spoiled little yuppie out of California with nothing important to say.” Yet in a private conference over a ten- page manuscript, Levine did circle six lines and said to me, “If I had written these six lines, I would’ve called that a fucking day.” Working with Levine toughened my skin, my resolve: I would continue down this path with or without anyone else’s goddamn approval. The thing is this: Leslie Norris made me feel that I belonged to the world of contemporary American letters. He’d show me the latest galleys Peter Davison would send him from the Atlantic Monthly and say to me: “Tim, send your poems there too. Always send your work to the best magazines—you owe that to your work. Tell Peter that I told you to send him work.” Leslie gave me courage to go out into the real world and not content myself with being a big fish in a small provincial pond.

On my shelves is an inscribed copy of Leslie Norris’s Selected Poems (Poetry Wales Press, 1986). There’s a sentence in the opening poem “Autumn Elegy” that haunts me still. Leslie wrote a Keatsian “ode to autumn” every autumn, invited all of us to do the same. Here, he marvels at a landscape, knowing that his peers who’ve died in the war are no longer able to see it, thus magnifying its beauty and the poet’s own sense of duty: “Yet, if I stare / Unmoved at the flaunting, silent // Agony in the country before a resonant / Wind anneals it, I am not diminished, it is not / That I do not see well, do not exult, / But that I remember again what // Young men of my own time died / In the spring of their living and could not turn / To this.” During my sojourn at BYU, the AIDS crisis was just in its infancy, a new war whose likes had yet to be seen in this world, and this poem would hold for me a special unintended resonance.

The life Leslie Norris lived made his poems true. He was the kind of mentor who went the extra mile at every possible turn. And I know he did the same for countless of other fledgling poets. He taught me that poets do not exist in a vacuum but in constellations across space and time. Through him, I met so many other poets who helped me on my way. And it is through his great example that his spirit now ripples on out throughout his poetic legacy and through all of us who have answered the call.

*

Mentor
by Timothy Liu

I drew his face on a sidewalk,

not with chalk but with
my mouth, my lips moist

against the hot cement

where girls had been playing
hopscotch all afternoon

until they were called in—

street lamps coming on,
shielding our neighborhood

from the stars. He taught me
names for constellations

easy to forget—secret
passwords left on my body

the hoses can’t flush away.

Reprinted by permissions of author, editors, and publisher, the essay “My First Poetic Mentor Was A Welshman Named Leslie” and the poem “Mentor” first appeared in Poets on Growth: An Anthology of Poetry and Craft, edited by Peter LaBerg and Talin Tahajian (Math Paper Press, 2015).

Timothy Liu was born in 1965 in San Jose, California to immigrant parents from Mainland China. He is the author of nine books of poems, including Don’t Go Back To Sleep, hot off the press from Saturnalia Books.Translated into ten languages, Liu’s poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, Bomb, Paris Review, The Pushcart Prize, Virginia Quarterly Review and The Yale Review. His journals and papers are archived in the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library. Liu is a Professor of English at William Paterson University in New Jersey and lives in Manhattan with his husband.

Janet Liew, poet and educator, nominates Arthur Yap’s “2 mothers in a h d b playground” as her favorite Singapore poem. Lim writes, “It’s amusing for the obvious and keen competition between the two women, and the way Arthur Yap uses non-standard English to bring out the familiar Singaporean context. If it were performed, it would definitely delight the audience.”

2 mothers in a h d b playground
by Arthur Yap

ah beng is so smart,
already he can watch tv & know the whole story.
your kim cheong is also quite smart,
what boy is he in the exam?
this playground is not too bad, but i’m always
so worried, car here, car there.

xxxxxxxxat exam time, it’s worse.

because you know why?

xxxxxxxxkim cheong eats so little.

give him some complan, my ah beng was like that,
now he’s different. if you give him anything
he’s sure to finish it all up.

xxxxxxxxsure, sure. cheong’s father buys him
xxxxxxxxvitamins but he keeps it inside his mouth
xxxxxxxx& later gives it to the cat.
xxxxxxxxi scold like mad but what for?
xxxxxxxxif i don’t see it, how can i scold?

on saturday, tv showed a new type,
special for children, why don’t you call
his father buy some? maybe they are better.

xxxxxxxxmoney’s no problem. it’s not that
xxxxxxxxwe want to save. if we buy it
xxxxxxxx& he doesn’t eat it, throwing money
xxxxxxxxinto the jamban is the same.
xxxxxxxxah beng’s father spends so much,
xxxxxxxxtakes out the mosaic floor & wants
xxxxxxxxto make terazzo or what.

we also got new furniture, bought from diethelm,
the sofa is so soft. i dare not sit. they all
sit like they don’t want to get up, so expensive.
nearly two thousand dollars, sure must be good.

xxxxxxxxthat you can’t say. my toa-soh
xxxxxxxxbought an expensive sewing machine,
xxxxxxxxafter 6 months, it is already spoilt.
xxxxxxxxshe took it back but……….beng,
xxxxxxxxcome here, come, don’t play the fool.
xxxxxxxxyour tuition teacher is coming.
xxxxxxxxwah! kim cheong, now you’re quite big.

come, cheong, quick go home & bathe.
ah pah wants to take you chya-hong in new motor-car.

Reproduced by permission of the publisher, “2 mothers in a h d b playground” is anthologized in The Collected Poems of Arthur Yap (NUS Press, 2013).

SP is pleased to present a second essay from Poets on Growth: An Anthology of Poetry and Craft (Math Paper Press, 2015), edited by Peter LaBerg and Talin Tahajian. (Read the first essay by Timothy Liu here.) The essay “Writing the God of Women” by Rachel Mennies speaks eloquently about poetry’s power to restore our past to us. Following the essay, a poem by the poet, which negotiates the shifting territory between law and love.

Writing the God of Women
by Rachel Mennies

My identity as a poet and my identity as a Jew first grew on parallel tracks. As a child, I read from the Torah with awe and hunger: the animal smell of the parchment and its thick-inked Hebrew characters looked like primordial poems, but I didn’t see them as poems until much later in life, as I started to write about Judaism more explicitly. My first love was this God’s mysticism. I read of He who spared Isaac, who took Jacob to Rachel; I read of the God who salt-pillared Sodom, who brought the floods to Noah. I worshipped the Haggadah, the text that sets the order for Passover seder and tells the story of the Jews’ exodus from Egypt. I held these stories against our own family mythologies—included among them my family’s escape from Nazi Germany and their immigation to and assimilation in Philadelphia—as they both rang with epic bigness. Their weight underpinned my entire childhood.

From the time I could read, text of God or no, I wrote, and with the confident earnestness of a young writer encouraged by her family to do so. My mother—perhaps this writer’s biggest fan—still keeps my “early work,” as she calls it, in Tupperware boxes in an upstairs closet. Some of this work is so early that it’s written in crayon. As I grew older and switched to pens, I kept journals in middle and high school and felt a deep catharsis in the writing- out of my teenage years. (Was it Art that drove this particular engine of angst? Hell no. It was boys. Always boys.) I found myself writing poetry most consistently in college, where I signed up for workshops and eventually applied to graduate school. Here, in the development of my writing-self, I see a straight and upward track: one without breaks, one with determinism and curiosity at its foundation.

My path to Jewish adulthood, by contrast, fragmented just as my poetry-self started to form most coherently. In high school, I watched during confirmation class as our synagogue’s new rabbi placed his hand on a student’s leg, above the knee, as she answered a question he’d posed about the midrash. In the confirmation ceremony of the class above mine, I watched that same hand travel underneath the long hair of a confirmee to her bare shoulders, in front of a full congregation, just as this student readied to embrace the presence of God in her adult life. As a grown woman, I now understand these abuses were the fault of this man, from whom I thankfully only endured a few too-long hugs and a grazed arm or two during class; at the time, however, I blamed this betrayal on God. I left the synagogue, ceased my confirmation training mid-stream, and spent years without stepping foot in another place of worship. I felt radically and suddenly secularized. Hearing, a year later, that this rabbi left our community for good—after more accusations came to light—did nothing for my severed faith.

In rebuilding this broken path during college, I found the only tool that worked was poetry. Once I started writing about Judaism, about my family’s stories, I felt Jewish again— if not dogmatically, at least historically. I felt connected, originated. I remembered the old stories suddenly and all at once—as one might realize, hearing the first strands of a song play from a speaker, that she already knows the words. Sometimes, as I wrote assignments for my college workshops, I’d open the Tanakh for reference and see, once again, the Hebrew script that I’d slowly learned how to read as a child. I read these stories in new contexts; I allowed myself to question what I read, to confront my lost faith and, instead of coaxing it back, I wrote the lost and (maybe) found together.

My first book, The Glad Hand of God Points Backwards (from which the accompanying poems come), works to place the Old Testament God of Men in high-friction contexts and reconsiders some of the liturgy’s arguments about the role of women in Judaism. The poems tell a sort-of-true version of my family history and track that history to the present day: to me, the poems’ speaker, a sort-of-me. I wrote this collection over about five years, beginning with this sort-of-conversion/sort-of-return I experienced to Judaism while in college, and later in graduate school. The collection remembers the angry heat of abuse, of a wrong-placed hand—because forgetting, the Old Testament God tells us, is a lie—but they also remember the warm peace of a childhood spent watching my mother braid challah, spent singing the minor-key lilt and lull of Hebrew prayers.

Even though I’m no longer explicitly writing poems about faith or God or Judaism, having turned to other subjects, I can still sense the weight I felt in my early childhood returning to my shoulders, can feel it remaining. I can tell it’s a Jewish weight because it feels like the weight of history.

*

Eating Animals Without Faces
by Rachel Mennies

The Kashrut teaches us: eat only from what we can stare
straight in the eye, mix it with nothing, feel its throat between two prayerful

hands. What we hide from is evil: boiled alive, shell-entombed
and silent. The mussel, bland and fat as a tongue—or the scallop, the clam,

the conch, storied for its powers of arousal. All the ocean flotsam
of the world, culled onto the sand in giant purges, the sea prepared

to answer our strange urges, all sorts of basal hungers. What we seek
alone at night stays hungry, always hungry, your chest

against my back, rocking like a lost boat in a storm. Your face
roots at the nape of my neck, all animal, impossible to see.

Reprinted by permissions of author, editors, and publisher, the essay “Writing the God of Women” first appeared in Poets on Growth: An Anthology of Poetry and Craft, edited by Peter LaBerg and Talin Tahajian (Math Paper Press, 2015). The poem “Eating Animals Without Faces” is collected in The Glad Hand of God Points Backwards by Rachel Mennies (Texas Tech University Press, 2014).

Rachel Mennies is the author of The Glad Hand of God Points Backwards, winner of the 2013 Walt McDonald First-Book Prize in Poetry, and the chapbook No Silence in the Fields. Her poetry has appeared in Crazyhorse, Colorado Review, Black Warrior Review, Drunken Boat, Poet Lore, and elsewhere, and has been reprinted at Poetry Daily. Since 2015, Mennies serves as the series editor of the Walt McDonald First-Book Prize in Poetry at Texas Tech University Press. She teaches writing at Carnegie Mellon University and is a member of AGNI’s editorial staff.

SP is pleased to present the third essay from the new anthology Poets on Growth: An Anthology of Poetry and Craft, edited by Peter LaBerg and Talin Tahajian, and released by Singapore-based publisher Math Paper Press. (Read the first and second essays.) “Rod Muckuen Saves the World” by Angela Voras-Hills is an attractive essay that describes how a girl from a small town found her way into writing poetry, led by living voices.

Rod MuKuen Saves the World (Why I Write Poems)
by Angela Voras-Hills

I guess my story begins with Rod McKuen. If you’re not familiar with Rod McKuen, he is like Leonard Cohen, but he is not like Leonard Cohen at all. When I was a teenager, I found a few hardcover Rod McKuen books at my high school library, and I took them. I don’t know why. I wasn’t really the thieving type, and I didn’t know much about poetry. When I got the books home, I took an X-ACTO knife to the poems I didn’t like and collaged every available space with pictures of Claire Danes and random quotes from magazines. On weekends, I’d cram into a booth at the truck stop in my tiny hometown and smoke cigarettes and drink coffee and read the poems to friends.

And that was that. I graduated high school, moved to Germany for a year, and while I often heard the echo of some of the poems throughout my life, I never read them again.

Long story short: I came home from Germany, had a baby, and started college (the baby only relevant to the story in that it’s kind of a big deal and drastically shaped my view of the world and how I handle myself in it). During my second year as an undergrad, I took a wonderful composition course, where we read Lorrie Moore and David Sedaris, and my mind was blown completely. Not only were their stories fantastic, but both writers were/are still alive (and Moore was living in Wisconsin, which was a bit unbelievable).

Don’t get me wrong, I took all of the English classes in high school, and I loved reading, but I honestly did not realize that writers existed as people. If you’d asked me to name a living writer, I would’ve said “Dean Koontz…uh… Stephen King?” (I would not have been positive that King was still alive). And in all of my reading until this composition course, I don’t recall having read anything by a woman ever (though I’m sure I must’ve, right?). So, at around 22, I realized that writers existed, and I decided I would be one.

I started writing fiction by mimicking Moore, and very true to her story “How to Become a Writer,” I wrote a handful of stories in which nothing ever happened. I was obsessed with the subtleties of emotion and thought, which are so hard to convey in a character’s actions. I wasn’t as interested in exploring what people were doing, but why they were doing it. I wanted to know the way people convinced themselves what they were doing with their lives was ok or enough.

After writing quite a few short stories in which nothing happened, I took an Intro to Creative Writing workshop and read Wislawa Szymborska. I went to my professor’s office and said something like, “This doesn’t rhyme, and it doesn’t make me feel like an idiot: is this a poem?” Indeed, he assured me that it was, and then explained a bit about free verse. Until then, other than Rod McKuen, I’d had two other experiences with poetry:

1. In high school we created rhyming poems in the shapes of animals and hourglasses and such, &

2. In a Modern American Lit course, where we read T.S. Eliot, and in which my professor made a comment about how lowbrow Rod McKuen was. Ouch.

So, armed with the knowledge that poets are living people, I started writing poems. My first poem happened like this: I’d been reading a lot of poems. Then, one day, I was walking down the hall of the house I grew up in, and I heard words in my head, and I wrote them down. And it was a poem. I revised it as I wrote it. I spent maybe an hour or two on it, and retrospectively, for a girl who had no idea what poetry was just a bit before, it wasn’t that bad at all.

I brought that poem and a few others to my Intro to Creative Writing workshop, and they went over fairly well, and people said nice things about them, but they hadn’t felt like anything I’d actually done. I didn’t struggle to write them or revise them, and it didn’t take a long time to get those ideas on the page. Writing poems felt as natural as breathing, and who wants to be praised for breathing? And since I didn’t really know the rules of the game I was playing, I felt like a fraud when people said nice things about my poems. So, I continued to write fiction, because I sucked at it and it was difficult, which made me feel legit.

Two years later, I was still writing (mostly not-good) fiction for workshops and poems for fun, when I decided to switch things up and take a poetry workshop. We read Louise Glück’s “The Drowned Children,” and that was the end of it. I was done with fiction. Glück’s poem was the most beautiful, terrifying thing I’d ever read, and I felt awful for wanting to read it again, but I had to. And then we read Brigit Pegeen Kelly’s “Song.” The coexistence of beauty and brutality in these poems were things I’d been struggling to reconcile for so long, and in reading them, I finally understood what a poem should do.

I started coming to poetry with questions. I turned to it like others turn to religion: to understand, but also to accept that there are questions to which I don’t need an answer. To believe in something I cannot explain. To celebrate life in all of its ugliness and splendor. At this point, I need to write through so much of what I think and see in order to fully experience and learn from it. And though writing poetry is no more outwardly difficult than it was when I wrote my first poem, there is now a struggle at the core of each poem I write, and each word is more deliberate (and the very idea of being “legit” makes me blush for my silly little writer-self).

Despite what critics say, I still have a soft spot in my heart for Rod McKuen. Because of him, I learned to call bullshit on “highbrow” and “lowbrow” designations. To participate in life and appreciate art, you need to forget about your ridiculous brows. McKuen sold millions of books of poetry that people actually read, and that is a great thing for all of humanity. Maybe some of his readers went on to read T.S. Eliot, and that is wonderful. And maybe a few of those people eventually moved on to write their own poems. And that’s good for humanity, too.

*

Unfurling
by Angela Voras-Hills

xxxxxxxxAfter the seasonal fires filled our lungs,
we washed the linens. The neighbor’s cat lingered
xxxxxxxxon our windowsill, looking in. We couldn’t

get rid of him, no matter the poison. By that time,
xxxxxxxxwe’d known for months. The grass
had been singed by the soil, worms

xxxxxxxxlay shriveled in the dirt. We waited
all night near the window for crickets, didn’t hear
xxxxxxxxthe possum digging its way in

through the foundation of our house.
xxxxxxxxIt curled into a ball behind the dryer to die.
Days later, the sidewalk was glistening black,

xxxxxxxxcovered with the crickets’ silent bodies.
You carried me to the car and began
xxxxxxxxdriving. When the urge came

to push, I hesitated, but couldn’t resist
xxxxxxxxthe burning. The moon sat quietly above
the ribs of the earth. Somewhere, tides were rising.

Reprinted by permissions of author, editors, and publisher, the essay “Rod McKuen Saves the World (Why I Write Poems)” first appeared in Poets on Growth: An Anthology of Poetry and Craft, edited by Peter LaBerg and Talin Tahajian (Math Paper Press, 2015). The poem “Unfurling” was first published in Linebreak.

Angela Voras-Hills earned her MFA at UMass-Boston and was a fellow at the Writers’ Room of Boston. Her work has appeared in Kenyon Review Online, Best New Poets, Memorious, & Hayden’s Ferry Review, among other journals and anthologies. She has received awards from the Sustainable Arts Foundation and the Key West Literary Seminar. She currently lives in Madison, WI, where she is co-founder of The Watershed: A Place for Writers.

Prayer flags
by Janet Liew

Like a greedy child, the sun has sucked all
the colour out of these flags. Strung up in

repeated chromatic sequence—blue, white,
red, green, then yellow—from the low places

to the high, these amulet cloths are like
pages torn carefully from a holy text,

prayers for the Wind Horse to carry off
to all parts of the world in his gallop.

Symbols structure the deep chaos for us,
make things signify beyond themselves. Cloth

needs to be more than fabric for the body,
and colours need to be more than pigments

bound chemically to woven fibres:
the aching blue of a remembered sky,

the pure whiteness of the air, of the wind,
red the scorching heat of fire on the hills,

cool green of water in jadeite rivers,
yellow in earth, the golden shine of soil,

all five elements in corporeal form.
Each fugitive dye is recaptured, reborn

as fresh flags hung next to the old, proclaiming
renewal of hope, circular harmony,

the vast sky a temple with no boundaries.

Reprinted by permissions from the author, editors, and publisher, “Prayer flags” is first published in From Walden to Woodlands: An Anthology of Nature Poems (Ethos Books, 2015), edited by Ow Yeong Wai Kit and Muzakkir Samat, as a Singapore Interfaith Initiative.

Check out the book’s website for conversations with fellow environmentalists, writers, and interfaith practitioners. Or join the book’s Facebook community to dialogue with like-minded individuals.

In her years as a teacher, Janet Liew taught General Paper, English Language and Literature. Currently a senior curriculum specialist in the Ministry of Education, she is involved in syllabus-related work, and conducts professional development workshops for teachers. Janet won four Golden Point Award prizes for her poetry, and was a participant in the Mentor Access Project (MAP) 2007/2008. Reading–especially poetry and non-fiction–and creative writing are two of her passions. Spending inordinate amount of time in bookshops and building up her home library are two more.

Jinat Rehana Begum, educator and author of First Fires, nominates Isa Kamari’s poem “The Koran Chanter of Geylang Serai” as her favorite poem by a Singaporean. She writes, “I love poems that preserve our collective memories of places and spaces but this poem is my current favourite because of its complex layers of sounds, sights and meanings. The litany of typographical descriptions of Geylang Serai and Joo Chiat evokes the dogged recitation of the Koran chanter while mapping out in vivid detail yet another familiar and well-loved cultural space that is rapidly becoming unrecognisable in the name of urban renewal. The lyricism of the Koran and of Malay poetry is evident throughout these rhythmic lines which speak of change, loss and spirituality. It’s difficult to forget the biting irony of the final two-line stanza—it almost seems a call to arms.” The original Malay version follows the author’s own English translation.

The Koran Chanter of Geylang Serai
by Isa Kamari (translated by the author)

Turbaned he used to operate from a small plot
At the intersection of Joo Chiat and Geylang Serai
Under the shady Rain tree
With his wife, a microphone and large parasol
Pictures of past grandeur hang loosely
Fingers dancing on worn-out synthesizer keys
Chanting the Koran and its translation
Too often a nuisance sometimes entertaining
Beggars grasping for a morsel by the wayside
Mouth of Joo Chiat agape paving the way
Entertainment district and night vices
3 star-hotels well patronised even for just 2 hours
Eating houses sprout to whet various appetites
Malay village since born had a deformed soul
Will be demolished as decreed in urban renewal plan
New market promises clean and bright future
Chasing away food-poisoning crisis of makeshift stalls
Overhead bridge connects directly to a shopping centre
Elevating the commercial image of sophisticated Malay
New 20-storey blocks of flats change the demography
Koran chanter moves to a spot across the road
Not far from the main entrance of new market
Old hopes renewed by latest opportunities
Steadfast in defending dreams and slogan
Not to beg but to seek a livelihood
From the generosity of Geylang Serai’s visitors
Coming in droves manifesting solidarity and illusions
During the fasting month as Eid approaches
Chanting the Koran and its translation:
“God will not change
The condition of a people
Unless the people change their condition.”

Satisfied he smiles for he has changed
The spot to seek his livelihood from across the road.

*

Pelaung Al-Quran Geylang Serai
by Isa Kamari

Bersaban dia pernah beroperasi di tapak kecil
Di persimpangan Joo Chiat dan Geylang Serai
Di bawah pohon pukul lima rendang
Bersama isteri, mikrofon dan payung lebar
Gambar gemilang masa lalu bergantungan lesu
Tarian jari pada gigi synthesizer usang
Melaungkan Al-Quran serta terjemahannya
Sering mengganggu kadangkala menghibur
Peminta sedekah mengendeng rezki di tepian
Mulut Joo Chiat menganga membuka laluan
Daerah hiburan dan maksiat waktu malam
Hotel tiga bintang laris dihuni biar hanya 2 jam
Memercup kedai makan memenuhi aneka selera
Perkampungan Melayu sejak lahir songsang rohnya
Bakal diroboh mengikut pelan pemugaran bandar
Pasar baru menjanjikan esok bersih dan cerah
Menghalau krisis keracunan makanan di pasar sementara
Jejantas menghubungi langsung kompleks beli-belah
Merpertingkatkan wajah komersil Melayu canggih
Flat baru 20 tingkat menukar demografi
Pelaung Al-Quran berpindah ke seberang jalan
Tidak jauh dari gerbang kompleks pasar baru
Harapan lama diperbaharui peluang terkini
Tekal bertahan dengan impian dan slogan
Bukan meminta sedekah tetapi mencari rezki
Daripada ihsan pengunjung Geylang Serai
Berbondong menghadirkan solidariti dan ilusi
Pada bulan puasa menjelang Hari Raya
Melaungkan Al-Quran serta terjemahannya
“Sesungguhnya Allah tidak merubah
Nasib sesebuah kaum
Melainkan kaum itu sendiri merubah nasibnya.”

Dia tersenyum puas kerana telah merubah
Tapak mencari rezki dari seberang jalan.

Reprinted by permissions of author and publisher, the poem “The Koran Chanter of Geylang Serai” by Isa Kamari is first published in Fifty on 50, edited by Edwin Thumboo, Isa Kamari, Chia Hwee Pheng, and K.T.M. Iqbal, National Arts Council, 2009

Isa Kamari graduated with B.Arch. (Hons) from the National University of Singapore (1988), and M.Phil in Malay Letters from the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (2008). He is currently Deputy Director, Architecture Design with the Land Transport Authority, Singapore. He has written nine novels in Malay: Satu Bumi, Kiswah, Tawassul, Menara, Atas Nama Cinta, Memeluk Gerhana, Rawa, Duka Tuan Bertakhta and Selendang Sukma. Seven were translated into English: One Earth (Satu Bumi), Intercession (Tawassul), Nadra (Atas Nama Cinta), A Song of the Wind (Memeluk Gerhana), Rawa (Rawa), 1819 (Duka Tuan Bertakhta) and The Tower (Menara). He has also published two collections of poems, Sumur Usia and Munajat Sukma, a collection of short stories, Sketsa Minda and a collection of theatre scripts, Pintu. Isa also writes song lyrics and scripts for television drama serials and documentaries. Isa was conferred the S.E.A. Write Award (2006), the Cultural Medallion, the highest Arts Awards in Singapore (2007), and the Anugerah Tun Seri Lanang, the highest Malay Literary Award in Singapore (2009).