This collection explores the creative space of poetry as a means to unravel feelings evoked by the violence of war or by everyday traumatic events. One may come to terms with uncomfortable, including unspeakable, feelings by describing them with imagery from nature and one’s immediate environment. By participating in grieving, the self can better face any lingering effects of trauma. In this creative space, dramatic speakers retell stories and give vent to contradictory feelings through silences and free play. Their accounts attest to the dappled beauty of the human condition even if the full nature, scope and effects of traumatic memories are always beyond their grasp.
Here it is going to happen is the title of a painting memorialising Albert Winsemius' industrial survey mission to Singapore. The picture depicts the hilltop view of a pre-industrial Jurong.Besides being a biography of Albert Winsemius, the book examines Albert Winsemius' affinity with Singapore and his contributions to the nation's economic development. It also looks at his legacy and influence on past, current and future economic planners.
“Let our scars fall in love,” Galway Kinnell said. In this compelling book, Desmond Francis Xavier Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé moves his love language over old wounds, deep cuts now seemingly inappreciable. Scarred over and smoothed out—by grace. Yet, how reasoned and magnificent the rising for air, the lyric ascent that wraps a heady mix of theological imagination and handsome aesthetics, without pause or apology. This is a hearty nod to Hans Urs von Balthasar’s three transcendentals of Being—beauty, goodness, truth. In these poems, one experiences the full-bodied witness of Catholic piety, one that remains brave, vulnerable, curious, devoted, and above all, reverent. The lines traverse a broad, lustrous terrain, from Mount Olivet to Macau, Malacca to Montreal. From Caravaggio’s Deposition of Christ to Salvador Dalí’s Ascension of Christ. From the Church of Agios Lazaros to the Church of the Sepulchre of Saint Mary. One walks through Ordinary Time to Advent, and looks on the year Ash Wednesday fell on Saint Valentine’s Day. Without reservation, there remains an adoring love for the Holy Eucharist. And veneration for what is an impressive host of saints—from Saint Monica to Saint Rose of Lima, Saint John of the Cross to Saint Josemaría Escrivá. How do our conversations with God inhabit their own speech acts, then settle comfortably into the contemplative, the deep quiet of silence? How does the language of the confessional translate itself into confessional poetry, the expressed lyric turning itself over and over again, how iterative, how manifold the unfolding and infolding? A language always stationed in a state of contingency, open in its gentle evolutions—by turns; yet, all at once. The fragile transformations as delicate and faint, as they remain illumined, uplit. Always looking heavenward, toward the light, toward transcendence.
Tell me again where home is, where inhabit all the holy hours, where someday you will find me. - from "Time Lapse" Coastlands is Aaron Lee's third collection of poetry. Whether in a small town or frenetic city, the poet has never lived far from the sea. This book documents his life experience as a pilgrim still finding his place in the wider world. In these fifty poems he recollects, explores, embraces and anticipates what is lost and found in each of the places he calls home: Malaysia, Singapore and Hawaii. Everywhere, natural and urban landscapes anchor and influence his identity and connect him to humanity. In ancient writings "coastlands" means the far reaches of the earth--places accessible only by crossing oceans of unknown magnitude. Truly, life is a voyage from which the traveller never returns. "Coastlands is shaped and driven by an esemplastic power and a persuasive, lyrical flow. These poems possess a notable immediacy, profound resonance and imaginative unity. By sharing the poet's meditative and philosophical explorations, the reader is enriched in the best possible way." - Edwin Thumboo
Uncompromising yet accessible, the six sequences in Changes and Chances explore love, sorrow, time, nature, and humanity. By turns passionate, hermetic, and heartbreaking, they simultaneously endure and celebrate all the imperfections of the world. Leonard Ng blends free verse with adaptations of both Western and Asian forms to create a musical poetry grounded in the traditions of both East and West. A purchase of the book comes with a complimentary Changes and Chances postcard (while stocks last)!
What can Singapore's weather offer? More than a monochrome of rain and shine, as these poems show. Travelling the shifting patterns of youthful love and loss, they take us into sun, shade, shower, and the variations in between.
