post-taiwan (4)

God i miss Taiwan.
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One of these days, i'm going to find a way to articulate exactly what it was about that one-week Taiwan trip that made it (seem?) so pivotal. Surely it wasn't just because i had conceived of it precisely as a transit-point between one thing (this particular period of school-teaching) and another (writing what i hope will be my first book). There was something else about it -- something about the conversations i had there, what i saw of the way people live there -- that i think will turn out to have a profound effect on the way i think and see things. i just don't know, yet, exactly what that effect is, and exactly what the triggering factors were.
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Maybe there will be poems.
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PS:
In other news. As far as my falling in love with other countries goes -- i think it's far more convenient to miss Taiwan than to miss Norway. At least it's much closer to Singapore, and much cheaper. And i can converse with them in their native language. And the food in Taiwan is sooooooo much better than in Norway.
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national gallery singapore

So we now finally have our very own national art gallery. It's gorgeous. The architecture itself is a feast for the eyes. And the artwork is seriously good too. i now anticipate spending happy afternoons there, wandering the galleries, the same way i used to just pop in at the National Gallery in London just to hang out and chill out.
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It's high time Singapore had a cultural institution like this, and i'm so glad the government decided against turning the buildings into yet another luxury hotel. The $532 million is money well-spent. What the opening of the NGS means is that from now on, generations of Singaporean children will be able to go to an art museum and see that Singaporeans do make art that is valued and recognised by society here. It means that, eventually, when it comes to thinking about what course of study to pursue in school and what careers to prepare themselves for, art-loving children will see that a career in art is a practical possibility here, that investing in the necessary training and work will not leave one high and dry when it comes to the bread-and-butter necessities of life. They can be arts practitioners, administrators, curators, or any number of other art-related professions that require a proper arts ecosystem to be economically viable. And arts ecosystems need to be built round the right supporting institutions and infrastructure.
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Really excited to see how things in the arts scene develop in the next few years. i feel that things are moving, changing -- people are getting together to talk and think and make things happen. It's all pretty exciting.
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(And yes, i think this is a pretty good intro video, despite the aggressive warlike music. Who do they think they're fighting??)
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openness

One of the things i've tried all my life to avoid, i'm starting to realise, is being trapped in a particular social circle, worldview, or way of seeing things. Even in primary school, i shuttled between two groups of friends who did not like each other. Of course i realise how ridiculous this is. It is impossible to live a coherent life without accepting one fundamental way of seeing things. And if that one way is an adamant refusal to be tied to any one way of seeing, the result is an insistence on 'freedom' that can become a prison in its own right.

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Circles within circles. 'The reverse side also has a reverse side', as Stephen Dunn put it so well.

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[i do have a clear moral code, i think, and a clear worldview. i'm a Christian -- with a lot of addenda and caveats layered on top of that, because 'Christianity' comes in so many different shapes and sizes, takes so many different forms. But i'm also a Christian who is, i hope, deeply committed to valuing and respecting other ways of seeing, other forms of belief. i think that's why i've never been able to bring myself to evangelise to anyone..... ]

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Back to the aversion to being trapped in a single way of being. i guess that explains why i sometimes have these mind-boggling conversations with people from one end of my social-circle-spectrum that completely contradict the thinking of people from the other end of the social-circle-spectrum. It's interesting, and i don't think i'll ever want to give up the openness to different perspectives that such mental-jolts encourage. i guess that i've always chosen, and will probably continue to choose, the discomfort of not really fully belonging anywhere, over to the limitation of only seeing things in one way.

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A more positive way of looking at it, i guess, is that choosing openness can make you an effective bridge-builder. i think, with things the way they are in the world right now, we need bridge-builders more than ever before. i don't think the alternative of huddling ourselves up in little hermetically-sealed communities of like-minded people, is a viable option anymore. Not with the internet and globalisation. We're being forced to engage with difference, like it or not. The choice available to us, is between openness and acceptance, or intolerance and conflict. This cuts both (or would 'all' be the better word?) ways.

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post-taiwan (3)

More Taiwan fandom. i'm now thinking that maybe, after the book is done, i'll reward myself with a solo backpacking trip round Taiwan. The original plan was a trip in some (probably East) European country that doesn't speak much English. But with things the way they are in Europe right now, i think maybe Taiwan might be a better option.
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The experience of not speaking English for a whole week and being forced to dredge up my long-unused Mandarin on the recent trip was actually pretty enjoyable. And perhaps going to a country which speaks your second rather than your first language, would be safer than going alone to a place where you have absolutely no knowledge of the native language, while still offering a certain degree of linguistic challenge / friction. And i've always felt vaguely un-proud of my lousy Chinese. This will be good opportunity to do something about it -- learning Chinese by immersion.
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And yes, if i do make it for this Grand Tour, i'll do the "don't look things up on the internet and just rely on a guidebook" thing i was talking about some time back. It'll be fun.
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加油 on the book!
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singapore poetry

[It's become the accepted usage -- 'Singapore poetry' instead of 'Singaporean poetry'. i don't think i'll ever stop cringing.]
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Something about reading poetry about Singapore that makes me feel so suffocated. It's the same feeling of suffocation that i get when i listen to my Civil Service friends talking about the Civil Service.
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Actually, come to think of it, i feel the same sense of suffocation when i'm cooped up in a room for more than a few hours at a time. (i first noticed this a few years ago, but it was only on this Taiwan trip that i became quite clear that this is a thing for me. i didn't like working in my room, and had to bring my computer out into the open air areas where i could look up and see the sky, the clouds, the silhouettes of the mountains in the distance.)
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Maybe there's a larger pattern here that i've never noticed before.
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on city harvest church

Need. To. Get this out of my system.

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So the City Harvest verdict is out, and the sentence too. And it's jail for the group, and a good thing too, i say. 

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Just to be clear. i have never been to that church, and never will go. i think their theology is unsound -- nay, wrong -- and i think it presents a distorted view of God that has led many astray. i think that anyone who has given the New Testament even the most cursory of readings will know that the lifestyles of the church leaders, and the methods they've used to spread their false teachings, are entirely not in line with the life that Christ preached and lived. 

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It's been an interesting time, and most interesting of all, i think, is the reaction of the Church in Singapore (Church with a big C) to the case. 

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Many of my friends -- including leaders of other churches and also Christian interest groups whom i respect and look up to -- have been teaching that the best response is silence. To avoid condemnation. To offer mercy and to remember the good that CHC has done, even as we acknowledge that they may have gone too far in their zeal and overstepped the boundaries. To remember that what they did was rooted in good intentions.

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i disagree.

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Sure, i understand the view that we should not be casting stones, especially not in a time when the church leaders are down and in trouble. i understand the view that we should check out the beams in our own eyes before trying to remove the specks in the eyes of our brothers. 

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But at the same time, sin needs to be called out and dealt with. The secular legal system in Singapore has done that in this case, by subjecting the church leaders to a criminal investigation, and sentencing them to imprisonment. But CHC itself continues to resist admitting its leaders had done any wrong. They persist in insisting that their intentions were good, and that the sentence is undeserved. 

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Yes, it is true that God offers mercy and forgiveness to those who repent. But the repentance is key. i don't think there was any point at which God (whether the God of the Old Testament, or even Jesus in the New Testament) tells people that they will be given mercy even if they do not repent. It's important to have the humility to admit when we've done wrong, and to turn away from that wrongdoing.

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As for the response of the Church at large in Singapore. i think we need to be truthful. Trying to cover up the wrongdoing, or trying to pretend that it was not as serious as it was, will only result in cynicism and disillusionment among those who can clearly see that something is not quite right. And i think that these people are many. We must not try to avoid shining the light of self-examination on ourselves. The Bible holds church leaders to high standards, and any attempt to fudge that is likely to be seen as whitewashing by those outside the Church. It destroys the Church's reputation for integrity and truth-telling by subscribing to a mistaken view of kindness and compassion. No. It is not kindness to excuse wrongdoing. It is injustice. And we need to be willing to speak truth, even if speaking the truth may be perceived by some to be washing dirty linen in public. (In other words, from an outsider's point of view, refusing to speak the truth is basically just an attempt to cover our own asses because we're afraid of being tainted by association with those who have done wrong.) Even if subjecting others to such standards means that we open ourselves up to being subjected to the same scrutiny, and the same judgement, when we do wrong ourselves.

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And of course we will never live up to such standards. That's the whole point of the Gospel, isn't it. That all of us -- every single one of us -- have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. It's the first hard truth of human nature. No point trying to pretend that we can ever live up to the standards set by God's perfect goodness. Because to do so would be to negate the necessity of Christ's sacrifice on the cross. Human beings are flawed, and will never live up to the ideal that has been put in front of us. Hard truth. Deal with it.

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i do think, as a general life principle, that wrongdoing has to be faced up to, squarely, humbly, fearlessly. People who have done wrong should admit it and apologise for it. It's as simple as that. Anything less will simply poison things somewhere down the line, if not in the short run, then definitely in the long run. Entire relationships can be ruined if wrongdoing is not admitted, repented of, and then forgiven. i can't state this strongly enough.

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No. i'm not going to make a big fuss about this in public, whether on FB or elsewhere. i will say all this that i've written here if anyone asks me what i think. But i'm not going to force my opinions on others if i'm not asked.
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i feel i can, however, write about it here on my blog, because this is my blog -- and because i think the people who do read my blog are at least friends whom i trust enough to give my blog address to. Hopefully these friends (hello there!) will know that i'm not one for simplification of complex problems, or black-and-white treatments of Life In General. That what i write here is the conclusion of a long thinking process that i have not taken lightly. That i've thought through the various perspectives on the issue, and that i recognise it's complicated. That i do not intend what i write here to be a be-all-and-end-all prescription for ALL cases of sin and wrongdoing in the Church at large (ie, among Christians at large). 

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What i've written here is specifically directed at the City Harvest case. If there are any questions about whether there are bits of it which i intend to apply to other situations, please do our friendship a favour and ask me these questions directly, to my face, instead of speculating about my intentions in the space of your own head (or even worse, gossiping about it behind my back with our mutual friends). Thank you.
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In other, related, news. i'm starting to think that my disagreements with a respected fellow Christian (a friend, and an elder in his church) have gotten to the point where i have to stop (mentally) seeing him as a role model. i have a feeling that despite our shared faith, our personal values are so divergent that sometimes, i will not be able to agree with or endorse what he sees as being the right way to handle and approach things (yes, he is one of those advocates of silence in the City Harvest case). i guess the way to see this is to accept that the World At Large needs different types of people for different purposes, and that he has his role to play, and i have mine. The fact that our roles seem to be diametrically opposed to each other doesn't necessarily always mean that either of us is wrong. We could just be contributing to different ends of the spectrum of human experience.
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i guess i need to be OK with this. It's difficult because for many years i have seen him as a role model -- someone whose ways of being and doing i can look up to and emulate. i don't think i feel i want to emulate him anymore. And i think it's best that i admit this to myself, so that i can feel free to think and do things differently from him without feeling like i'm somehow wrong, simply because he must be right. i have to give myself the freedom to acknowledge that he is human too, and that in some cases, i might be right, and he, wrong. Otherwise, the friendship is likely to suffer eventually.

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big hair and beethoven

Sir Simon Rattle, on the 9 Beethoven symphonies
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Listening to Mr Big Hair talking about Beethoven and his symphonies, it strikes me that it is absolutely no wonder why i've always loved Beethoven's work. So much of what he says about who Beethoven was, or rather, the spirit behind his work, probably applies to me too. Whether for better or for worse.
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In other news. Mr Big Hair's passionate intelligence. The way he talks in that interview. i want to be like that when i grow up.
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post-taiwan (2)

Somehow it feels like i have unfinished business with Taiwan. i'd like to go back. To see Taipei again, this time to visit it properly. It seems a bit unbelievable to me now that the last time i was there, i actually managed to not go to Eslite, the famous 24-hour bookstore that everyone told me i had to visit. Yes, of course, i actually made a deliberate choice not to go, because there were other things i wanted to see, and because i was on my way to a writing programme in California, and i knew i was going to be seeing plenty of books there. i felt i didn't need to see (and buy ... !) more books in Taipei. But i still can't quite believe i made that decision.
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Why is it that Taiwanese people are generally so nice? And i mean this as a serious question. They're so warm and friendly, and it's so genuine. i noticed this the first time i was in Taiwan -- even the sales-people in the shops didn't have that ... i don't know what it is, but i feel it here in Singapore, and i felt it in China as well. A mercenariness, perhaps? An aggressiveness that only cares about whether you buy their stuff or not. i didn't get that sense in Taipei.
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i was talking about this with The Artist Friend -- we can't quite figure it out. Taiwanese people are so different from other East Asians. Or perhaps, more specifically, from other ethnic Chinese people.
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Honestly, i'd like to go back to FY. And also Taipei -- i want to see more of the city this time, rather than the very narrow neighbourhood i spent most of my time in the last time. Maybe once the book is done. i'll treat it as my reward for myself.
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post-paris

One thing i realised during / after the Taiwan trip -- but in a sense i think it's something i've been thinking about for a long time: how uncomfortable i am with the institution of religion. Now don't get me wrong. i think institutions are necessary. You need the structures to contain and make apprehensible the je ne sais quoi that is faith, the divine, the Godhead. But that knowledge of the necessity of the structures, doesn't make me comfortable with them.
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i think it's something about the way structures tend to want to fix things into immovable forms. Immovable forms that do not take into account the myriad ways life is so ever-shifting, so much bigger than what the human mind can conceive. There is almost always a but and and to things, but so very often, institutional religion doesn't give space for these words.
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i guess these questions are becoming even more urgent than ever before, what with Paris, and the response to it. Actually, what the heck. The world has been a different place since September 11. Paris is just the latest chapter in a story that began, explosively and in media res, more than fourteen years ago.
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[And, to those who keep going on about how we don't mourn for Beirut and Palestine etc and how that reveals the extent of our ignorance and bias -- i hear you. i just think that Paris, and New York, have symbolic value beyond the (incalculable) value of the individual lives that were lost, whether in New York, Paris, Beirut, Palestine, etc. Acknowledging the geopolitical shifts that Sept 11 and Paris 2015 signal, does not equate to valuing any less the lives that have been lost elsewhere. To make that argument, would be similar to me complaining, for example, about how my dad's failed operation and subsequent 8 years of bedridden-ness were less mourned than LKY's wife's 3 or 4 years living with stroke. The thing is, i don't even think it's an issue, because i realise it's not about how much my dad's life is or is not valued by people who have never even heard of him before. And it would completely besides the point to get angsty about why my dad, a common Maths teacher in a common neighbourhood school, was not more well-known than the wife of our first and world-renowned Prime Minister. It's just a completely different kind of significance altogether.]
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post-taiwan

Back from Taiwan, and already i'm missing the mountains. i miss the fresh cool mountain air, the wonderful food, and even the experience of having real conversations in Chinese. It's so interesting, how language works. i found myself being able to use words that are usually not used in day-to-day conversation, simply because i'd learnt them by heart way back in secondary school and for some reason i was able to access them when i needed them. Yet i also found myself sometimes struggling to express even the simplest ideas when it came to the everyday things. My Taiwanese hosts must have found it rather puzzling.
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i've never really thought about it very much before this trip, but i'm suddenly really grateful for my bilingual education and bilingual family. It was lovely to be able to have real conversations with my Taiwanese hosts -- conversations that went beyond the simply utilitarian, and that touched on things like culture / how people live, politics, even religion. i would probably never have been able to do that if my school and family backgrounds had been anything other than what they were.
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In other news. Confirmation once again that my intuitions are usually correct. It's a nice thing to know -- cos it means i can move forward more confidently towards the things i want or towards the things i think i'm supposed to do.
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taiwan 2015 (2)

Every time i travel out of Singapore, i always end up feeling like i really need to get out more. This trip to Taiwan has been no exception. Perhaps it's because i actually end up getting to know real people on my holidays / journeys -- people who are often very different from me. This time round, staying in a remote mountain region, getting to know a bit of what living in such a place means for the locals, getting to see a little of how they live. i'm left pondering on how little i know, how set in my city-living ways i've become. And not just any city, but Singapore. This ultra-modern, super-efficient, hyper-rule-abiding-and-organised place where life is so often planned down to the last centimetre. Which is so small that most people's lives tend to resolve into a general sameness -- yes, of course there are differences of class, ethnicity, religion, and all the rest, but everyone does after all live the urban life, undergo the same education system, is serviced by (yet complains about) the same government.
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Here in Taiwan, there is such a world of difference between life up on the mountains, and life in the cities. Between the lives of the aboriginal peoples, and the Chinese who moved here from mainland China.
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Just under a week here, and i've already started thinking in Chinese. In fact, this is the first time in my life i've had to communicate solely in Chinese for such a long stretch of time. i haven't been to Taiwan or China that many times, but even then, i've always had English-speaking friends or family with me. This is the first time i'm in a mainly-Chinese-speaking country on my own, with people who more or less only speak Chinese. It's been an experience. One i wouldn't mind repeating, truth be told.
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?!?!?

What is going on, Paris???
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Friends in Europe, please stay safe.
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taiwan 2015 (1)

Not having internet access is, i think, good for writing. The internet 'arrangements' here at FY are perfect for a writer's retreat -- there's no access in the rooms, so you can write deep into the night with no interruptions (or rather, no temptations to just do that little bit more "research", or to get onto FB "just" to find out what your writer friends are up to ......) But there's access in the common areas (so you can still stay connected to the outside world) -- the dining room, and where i'm sitting now, a little room with a Japanese-style tatami set-up, bamboo walls, little shelves with books on them set into the walls, and a small water-feature with what appear to be money-plants (i'm not very good with plant identification ... ) creeping up the walls.

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i can see myself coming back here every year. This is such a lovely, tucked-away little place -- in a valley of some mountain that most people outside Taiwan have probably never heard of, with such a friendly owner-family and nice, comfortable rooms. Fantastic food -- always important for Singaporeans -- homecooked by the owner's wife. And ample space to go walking, to take in the fresh mountain air. i love, too, the murmer of the river running through the entire estate.

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Mountain -- tick. River -- tick. Lots of green -- tick. Cool fresh air -- tick. Peace and quiet -- tick. Not too far away from Singapore -- tick. i could really keep coming back here.

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writerly musings

The trouble with trying to write anything is that life is always so complex. Things are never black and white, and, very often, the moment i write something down, i immediately think of a thousand and one (okok i exaggerate, probably more like three ... ) counter-arguments and caveats and exceptions. i think, my best work -- the ones i've allowed the world to see on one platform or other -- are the ones that have stood the test of my, erm, let's just call it 'seeing things from different perspectives'.
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Ooh. Eureka moment -- just as i'm typing this! Maybe that's why some of my best poems are persona poems. Dramatic monologues. Because they declare themselves to belong to a single, limited perspective. Dramatic monologues free a poet from that awful sense of responsibility that comes with writing poetry that may otherwise be seen as a declaration. A statement of dogma. Ha! That's an interesting, and rather illuminating, if i may say so meself, thought.
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SWF 2015 (3)

If i were the kind of person who believed in "signs" -- and in a sense i do, it's just that it's not so much that The Heavens beam these supernatural Signs down to Earth to guide people on their way, but rather the fact that all of life is full of "signs" -- grey clouds gathering are a sign of an impending thunderstorm, etc -- that, interpreted correctly, can help guide our decisions and actions. But anyways. If i were the kind of person who believed in "signs", i'd be totally convinced that The Book Project needs. To. Be. Written. NOW. It somehow feels like it's the right time. Like, people are thinking about these things without really being aware that they're thinking about them. It's like soil that is ready to be sown.
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Or, as The Artist Friend likes to say, it's "in the air". For the first time since i decided to commit to writing, this wonderful "double coincidence of wants" seems to be taking place: i seem to be interested in, obsessed with, something that people seem to be ready to hear.
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Had a wonderful convo today with visiting writer Rob Cowen. He was so clearly passionate about his subject, spoke with so much conviction. i want to be like that when i grow up. i don't want to be one of those writers who end up publishing books that they don't believe in.
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Also. Things at the SWF feel a bit different for me this year. For the first time, i feel like more a part of the community, whereas in the past i was always hovering at the edges, wondering where i belonged. i don't think i'll ever quite really belong until i publish my first book (and even then, who knows how people will respond to it), but it's nice to have friends to hang out with and chat with over food.
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speaking your mind

i'm not sure why i get so bothered by people who refuse to speak their minds. Possibly -- probably -- because i think that not speaking up -- ESPECIALLY when there is a problem -- just allows things to fester or get worse, or, at best, represents the loss of an opportunity to make things better.

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Simple example: asking for feedback on one's work. There are some bosses / friends / teachers / etc who will never say a negative thing, even if they see a problem. They would rather focus on the positive. Obviously, in the long run, this is a recipe for disaster. It means that the person needing feedback that will help him improve his performance, never actually gets it. He never learns what's wrong because the person who can see what's wrong is unwilling to just "spit it out". 

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The same goes for issues in relationships -- whether these are family relationships, romantic relationships, platonic friendships, etc. Some people just bottle everything up and just try to pretend everything is fine because they are afraid of conflict or because they do not want to cause offence or hurt. Which is fine when it's a trivial issue. But when it's a serious problem, bottling things up is also a recipe for disaster, and is, in fact, an avoidance of relationship, a way of keeping people at arm's length.

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Conflict is inevitable. And running away from conflict by acting nice all the time is not the way to deal with differences. There are some disagreements / differences / issues / problems that simply need to be brought out into the open and addressed frankly. Sometimes -- often, i would say -- the truth needs to be spoken. The trick is in doing it at the right time, in the right tone, in the right way. 

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travel before the age of the internet

So there i was at Kino today -- the first time i've been to the new reduced-floor-space version on the 4th floor of Taka. And because i had time, and wasn't looking for anything in particular, i ended up in the Travel section looking at travel guides. And it occurred to me as i was flipping through a Lonely Planet guidebook, that it's been so long since i've planned for a trip without the internet. i was reminded of the trips i went on in the uni days, before the internet had really taken off big-time, and when one still relied on just the printed word to decide the where, what, when, and how of travel. There was something exciting about it. Most of the time, you'd go to a place, say a town or a village or a lake / mountain / beach / whatever, not really having a clear idea of what it looked like, or what the experience would be like once you got there. Sure, you could always make the effort to go look it up in some book or other, but it would be almost impossible to find colour photos of the more obscure places in printed books. It's quite different now -- all you need to do is to look up the place on Google, and inevitably, there will turn out to be someone who has been there before you, and posted photos or reviews on Instagram or TripAdvisor to prove it.
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In other words, there was a certain mystery to travel back in the day that's been lost with the widespread growth of the internet.
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Maybe i'm just an old fogey. But i find it kinda sad. i liked the surprise of arriving in a place and truly seeing it for the first time. In fact, after that little sojourn at Kino (which is still very nice, by the way, even with the reduced floor space), i decided that the next trip i go on, i will plan without the internet. i think the furthest i'd go is to email to make enquiries or book tickets / accommodation. But i won't be reading up online reviews or flicking through Google Images. Instead, i will just buy a copy of the good ole Lonely Planet, and trust myself to the writer's judgement and recommendations. That way, perhaps, i might recover for myself some of the old magic of travel and exploration.
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SWF 2015 (2)

Day 2 personal highlights:
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1)
在世界的另一端书写 (From Worlds Away)
Panellists: 陶杰， 欣然， 叶孝忠
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One of the things i love most about the SWF is when it features anything other than Singapore-related stuff. i mean, look, i'm totally invested in the success and growth of the literary scene here, so i absolutely understand the need to nurture it, and the imperatives (to promote, to market, to grow the ecosystem) that this need, well, er, necessitates.
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But there's part of me that gets bored with navel-gazing. And gosh tiny countries have such small navels! For me, the most wonderful thing about the SWF is the chance to hear from other places, to see what the literary world outside our very narrow borders is like.
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Which is why i always love the panels featuring foreign writers. Not because foreign = better, but because foreign = different = the opportunity to learn new things. And panels provide the perfect platform for this because, by definition, they feature several writers at the same time, all giving their own perspectives on a question / issue that concerns them.
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It was really fascinating listening to Xin Ran talking about her years working with the British media in London, about the censorship she faced when she wanted to write things that didn't quite match up with what the British media wanted to hear about China. So much for freedom of speech!
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Some thought-provoking comments too, from Tao Jie, who basically spent something like 15 minutes interrogating the title of the panel, asking why writers who write in English away from the centres of English cultural power (the UK, the US) are never labelled as writing "from worlds away". Interesting. i'm not sure if that is entirely true -- writing in English from anywhere besides the UK and US, for example, often is seen as different and exotic.
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2)
Discovering the work of Indonesian essayist Goenawan Mohamad. i find his short pieces very inspiring -- not so much in their content, good though it may be, but in their possibility as a genre, a form. Maybe it's something i should think about doing. Set up a website with a weekly short essay. Something like that could grow into a substantial piece of work quite easily, i imagine.
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3)
The Dangerous Allure of Being Invisible
Speaker:  Philip Ball
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What interested me about this was not so much the main topic of invisibility ... but one of the questions that came up during the Q&A, on materiality. It occurred to me i think sometime around this year, or maybe last year, that i've been rather obsessed with this question of materiality for a long, long time. As a friend once said in response to something i wrote, "This matter matter matters." Ok. All this stuff will probably end up in The Book Project in some form or other. Looking forward.
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SWF 2015 (1)

It's that time of the year again, the SingLit community's annual (very extended) reunion dinner. This time round, we're back at The Arts House -- with most events at a single venue, rather than spread out over many different venues as it has been for the last few years. Things feel cosier now that it's all in one place. And it's easier to move between events, too, which used to be a bit of a problem in the past. Space makes a difference.
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Packed standing-room only poetry readings. Full-house panel discussions by (relatively) little-known authors. Who woulda thunk? i couldn't have foreseen this 10 years ago.
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Today, the launch of two first poetry collections by two friends -- one a former student. Their writing gives me goosebumps -- it's that good. i swear, some of our young people are writing poetry that could well hold its own out there with what the rest of the world has to offer.
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In other news. Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gift from the Sea. i think there is a tradition of women essayists publishing short meditative essay collections full of beauty and wisdom. Nice to know.
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