Posts in Events
Singapore Writers Festival 2020

SWF 2020 starts tomorrow and I haven't even figured out which programmes I'm going to be attending but by the grace of other authors who think kindly of my work I will be featured briefly in a couple of things:

1. Two of my poems will be read by the incredible spoken word poet Deborah Emmanuel on Love Radio, one of the programmes on the festival's radio station. This will happen tomorrow night, 30 October, between 9.30-9.50pm (Festival Pass only event).

Details on the festival radio here

2. I read one of my own poems and am interviewed by Marc Nair for Poetry Bites #6. The video was pre-recorded a month ago with all the appropriate social distancing measures in place, and is available after 4 November 9pm.

Details here

I also need to share this wonderful interview with Sharon Olds, by the incomparable Straits Times Arts Correspondent, Oliva Ho. I’ve been struggling a lot lately (and have also written a thing on this - but more on that next week) with the idea of intimacy within poetry - how much power then do you allow the audience to interpret from your writing, how people think they know you just from your poetry - and Olds’ speaks so eloquently on this subject.

Unlike many writers, Olds does not mind if people read her poems as autobiography. "It makes sense," she says, adding that she does not feel exposed by what she shares in her work.

But she stresses: "If the story of a poem is personal, or apparently personal - I think that isn't what's most interesting about a poem. I think that personal or not personal doesn't have to do with whether a poem works or not.

"Some poems might feel 'too personal' to some readers, others 'not personal enough' to others. For me, these are not the most important terms in which to talk about poems."

What matters to her, she says, are the myriad factors that go into making a poem come alive for the reader: passion and credibility; music, harmony and dissonance; relevance and originality.

From the time a poem is written - usually by hand with ball-point pen in a lined grocery-store notebook - to its successful fruition, she feels that it has gone over into the world of art.

"I am happy if someone likes it. But it's not exactly connected to me, as a diary entry might be. If it works as a poem, it has changed its life-form."

Singapore Writers Festival 2019

I have far too many things to do in the next few days and am still recovering from a really nasty cough picked up from the UK and a vicious combination of jetlag, night shift cycles and cough medicine means that I ended up falling asleep at 9pm last night and woke up at 4am this morning and I don’t know what is wrong with my body. But Singapore Writers Festival is coming and I am extremely excited.

SINGAPORE WRITERS FESTIVAL 2019 EVENTS I WILL BE A PART OF

Surreal World, Stranger Tales
3 November 8.30pm, The Arts House Blue Room

Panellist alongside other far more distinguished writers Indra Mas and Jon Gresham on urban legends and Asian folklore, moderated by Daryl Qilin Yam (who has already sent an email of fantastic questions) and you should really come by.


Spoke & Bird #27 Feat. Natalie Wang and Joses Ho
5 November 7.30pm, The Arts House Play Den

Will be one of the featured writers for Spoke & Bird - Poetry Open Mic with Joses Ho, as organised by Steph Chan. This is a free event and there is an open mic so come by.

SWF Conversations: The Spaces Between
10 November 1.30pm, The Arts House Living Room

This is a panel with Jennifer Anne Champion, Stephnie Dogfoot, and Zakir Hossain Khokan on the very many cool events that they organise and I'm very excited to hear what they have to say and you should be too.

There are also many many amazing events that I am going to be an eager audience member in - I cannot wait to get my copy of Pachinko signed by Min Jin Lee.

On an unrelated note, I’ve just finished reading Phillip Pullman’s latest novel The Secret Commonwealth, and am really impatient for the next book. You can read my minireview on Instagram here. And then, instead of reading the many many books I have accumulated from the last Book Depository order in August, my trips to Melbourne and London (I say accumulated like they somehow hopped onto my shelves all on their own and have nothing to do with me), I have instead chosen to reread Naomi Novik’s Spinning Silver. Given that this is one of my favourite books read in 2018 though, I cannot bring myself to regret this decision.