Overdue post: my poem, “Horrorshow”, is in A Luxury We Cannot Afford: An Anthology of Singapore Poetry, edited by Christine Chia and Joshua Ip and published by Math Paper Press.
Check out the review of the anthology by Prof Philip Holden here.
Category - Artsy Stuff
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It was a very serious story, but I found the concept it discussed absolutely hilarious, and I made it a point to tell my friends about it.
But because they are stupid – just kidding; they’re not and I love them a lot – no one got it. Which happens quite often, so I was, like, whatever.
But this morning, I suddenly woke up and the visual image of the concept appeared in my mind, and I was like: YES!
So I immediately grabbed my phone, fired up Phoster, and designed a little graphic, which I promptly Whatsapped to my friends.
The reaction: “Hahahaha.” “This is hilarious.” “Where did you get that from?”
But when I proposed to post it online, with a disclaimer, the reaction I received instead:
It’s troublesome to enforce how people share content. It’ll just be taken out of context and someone will report you for sedition. Then you can forget about being NMP.
No. Too sensitive to post.
I disagree with making it public. There will surely be people who will take it the wrong way. If it goes public, there will be people who will over-react. Sharing it with friends is fine.
So I decided to post what you see above instead. You can like it on Instagram too:
BONUS: Responses to this graphic:
Yeah, this is much better. You’ll still be reported, but it’ll be for being dumb.
Haha! But what is the point of posting it if everything is censored?
I know right.
Since 2011, when I reviewed Tan Tarn How’s Six Plays, I’ve made it a point to review a Singaporean literary text for each Jul issue of the Quarterly Literary Review, Singapore (QLRS).
This year, I’ve reviewed Noon at Five O’Clock: The Collected Short Stories of Arthur Yap (Edited by Angus Whitehead).
Dusty Gems
Collection highlights little-known area of Arthur Yap’s work
Edited by Angus Whitehead, an assistant professor of English literature at the National Institute of Education in Singapore, Noon at Five O’Clock: The Collected Short Stories of Arthur Yap is a volume of eight short stories that comes on the back of The Collected Poems of Arthur Yap (NUS Press, 2013). Both volumes arrive eight years after Yap’s passing — a timely reminder of the 1983 Cultural Medallion winner’s contribution to Singapore’s arts scene in a milieu currently predisposed to lauding the “pioneer generation”.
While Yap’s poetry is synonymous with the Singapore literary canon, it is the mention of his short stories that pulls the reader up short: the average literature reader in my generation, and later, is probably unaware that Yap wrote fiction. Thus, kudos must go to Whitehead for his imagination and insight in tracking down and putting together this volume, so that the breadth of Yap’s talents can be fully appreciated by a wider audience.
(continued…)