新加坡外文

Featuring a selection of short stories written between the 1960s and 2000, this collection charts Yeng Pway Ngon's evolution in subject matter and style over time. The earlier stories, written at a time when Yeng was known for his modernist poetry, exude solitude and melancholy, and deal with themes such as the wanton rebelliousness of youth, or the poet's shuttling between death and dream. From the 1970s onwards, he turned his attention to societal concerns— depicting a lonely writer who falls in love with one of his own characters, an unhappy man yearning for life abroad who ends up in a mental hospital, an unemployed man who finds joy in his friendship with a white bird, and another, who worries that he might turn into a flower. Other stories introduce us to a parrot who gets taken to court, an ant enamoured with his silhouette, and a disembodied mouth worshipped by the public. Sarcastic, darkly humorous and surreal, Yeng's writing depicts everyday life in all its absurdism and glory

Food Republic is a generous serving of Singapore's food culture: from the making and eating of food, to the sale and hawking of it, our love and hate of it, and the effects of its consumption and deprivation.

Food has always been our safe space, our comfort zone: a place where we could freely engage in heated arguments about the best nasi lemak, the most fragrant cendol and whether the standard of the stall has dropped or not. Yet this anthology, featuring more than one hundred literary explorations of our food and food culture, also shows that when people write about food, they often aren't just talking about food but usually about something else, closer to the heart. Or the bone.

Curated from previously published work and selections from an open call, the poems, fiction and non-fiction in Food Republic range from the passionately realised to tantalisingly surreal. Think of it as a buffet, a banquet, an omakase, a smorgasbord, a nasi padang spread, a thali or a rijssttafel – we hope we've assembled one to your taste. Come. Eat.

Some Contributors: Arthur Yap, Leong Liew Geok, Edwin Thumboo, Toh Hsien Min, Wong Phui Nam, Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Koh Jee Leong, Lee Tzu Pheng, Joshua Ip, Margaret Leong, Alvin Pang, Catherine Lim, Ng Yi-Sheng, Amanda Lee Koe, Alfian Sa'at, Wong May, Gopal Baratham, Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé, Yong Shu Hoong, Aaron Maniam, Hamid Roslan, Daren Shiau, Boey Kim Cheng, Theophilus Kwek, Cyril Wong and Jennifer Anne Champion

Edited by by Ow Yeong, Wai Kit and Wong, Genevieve

“These poems testify to the remarkable harmony between poetry and the visual arts. They offer a timely reminder about the miracle of being alive.”
— Edwin Thumboo

Love isn't just about chocolates and flowers. Love is inseparable from the heartaches of life. As Nicole Emma Low writes, "An artist's palette/May not be pretty, but paints/A lovely portrait."

What does it mean to be in love, to love, to be loved? What does it mean to render that in art? Last year, we invited thirty-four poets to pen poems on love and life inspired by the National Gallery Singapore, home to the world’s largest collection of Southeast Asian art. Drawing upon the rich tradition of ekphrasis—imaginative, spirited writing on art—our poets reframed paintings, chiselled new lines into sculpture, and exposed the unseen. In this collection, you'll find images of love and life in every incandescent, infinitesimal brushstroke of being, no matter how unlikely.

Based on artworks spanning centuries and countries, Love and Life at the Gallery is a multigenerational, multilingual, and multicultural exploration of the dimensions of love and life. Here, you’ll discover an installation by Thai artist Montien Boonma transmuted into a reflection on life cycles by Edwin Thumboo, the Indonesian activist Hendra Gunawan’s revolutionary War And Peace rewritten as a tale of change and immigration by Theophilus Kwek, as well as many other interpretative pairings between art and poetry that will change the way you look at love, life, and how it all intertwines.