translations to the tanglish◎Joshua Ip

translations to the tanglish is a collection of the 44 greatest-ever poems from the tang dynasty and song dynasty, dodgily “translated” into (1) english; (2) 2021; (3) singapore; (4) a pandemic. so su dongpo never used zoom, and du fu never caught covid-19; so li bai never drank lagavulin and wang wei never went to little india. but hey, none of them ever spoke english either.

flip on, or scroll down, or swipe through. in a world where every other poem is about the moon, our modern moon is a smartphone screen – what we reflect upon, what brings us light, what accompanies us when we drink alone, and what we share with someone a thousand miles away.

the collection asks you to invite thousand-year-old notions of sorrow, angst, regret, ennui, drunkenness, homesickness, longing and laughter into a contemporary frame, and to see if these long-buried poets of long-lost dynasties can still entice a modern heart to choose to be lost - in translation.