新加坡出版

About Aerial Roots

Aerial Roots is a poetry collection that meditates on the liminal space of displacement and settlement, arrivals and departures, uprootedness, and assimilation. It is between these hybrid shifts of time and place, of bilocation, that diasporic writers dwell for most of their lives. 

Visualising the ongoing narratives as akin to the banyan tree and its allegorical roots, the poems revisit the vast canvas of memory, places, and lived experiences. This collection negotiates and interrogates the complex issues of identity, ethnicity, belonging, heritage, and multiple homes to know where and what home is. 

About Shilpa Dikshit Thapliyal

Shilpa Dikshit Thapliyal is an Indian-Singaporean poet and author of two poetry collections. Her work has appeared in the Practice Research & Tangential Activities (PR&TA) Journal, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, The Best Asian Poetry, The Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English, Trivium, Little Things, to let the light in, Anima Methodi, and elsewhere. 

Poems from her previous collection Between Sips of Masala Chai (Kitaab International, 2019) have been selected for secondary school curriculum in Singapore. Her poem, ‘Hymn of Hope’, written during the pandemic for the Homeward project, was performed by the Carnegie Mellon Philharmonic Orchestra. Some of her poems have been translated into Japanese, Spanish, and Chinese Ink-Art. 

Her poems have been nominated for the Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize and awarded second place in The Letter Review Prize, 2022. Her third collection, Aerial Roots, was awarded The Letter Review Prize for Unpublished Books, 2024. She has read poetry at the Singapore Writers Festival, the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival, Mumbai, Poetry on the Move, Canberra, The RevTen Radio, USA, and the Festival of Friendship (Revolution of Tenderness, USA).

Shilpa has adjudicated several poetry competitions including the National Poetry Competition, the CLASS Poetry Competition, the National Poetry Recitation Competition, and the Write and Burn Spoken Word Competition. Shilpa serves on the organising committee of Poetry Festival Singapore as a poet and literary organiser.

Born and raised in India, Shilpa completed her Master's in Computer Management (MCM) from Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research, Symbiosis University, Pune. She worked in a leading IT services company before relocating to Singapore in 2001. She has recently completed her second Master's, M.A. (Arts) from the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Shilpa resides in Singapore with her family.
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Recommendations/Blurbs

These poems take us to the minutiae of the author’s beloved landscapes, familiar haunts and remembered neighbourhoods, but a new, rich tapestry of sights and sounds; of ethnic variety and riches. This is food for the soul; part of a significant journey of discovery, recall and recovery, a traveller’s recognition of how nature’s beneficence is a palpable blessing no matter where one is in the world.

 — Anne Lee Tzu Pheng

Tender. Present. Generous. Dignified. Shilpa Dikshit Thapliyal’s Aerial Roots is a deeply contemplative collection, intelligent and lustrous in its surfacing of rich feeling and authenticity. Perambulating around the banyan tree are poems laced in heavy symbolism. Threaded through are astonishingly beautiful images and sounds. The confessional moments meander their way confidently through verse, from the ghazal and haibun to prose poem. One becomes witness to a fondness—of memory, of nostalgia. Wait for the beautiful epiphanies, even as time and space remain suspended in this alluring lyric imagination. One encounters a poetry that bravely looks at ideas of identity, border crossings, diaspora, heritage, tradition, community, family, and what it means to belong. Indeed, this is a welcome homecoming for the author, and what a grand tour of a life’s journeying it has been. Sublime. Remarkable. Simply magnificent.

— Desmond Francis Xavier Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé
Winner of the Singapore Literature Prize

Shilpa's poetry traces how shifting light, from "coppered dawn" to "a sundown mist [descending] on the ghats," illuminates the tender narrative of a family in transition. The play between natural radiance and urban gleam becomes an objective correlative for the immigrant clan's own metamorphosis. Each poem distills the complex emotions of leaving and arriving, of roots seeking new soil while branches reach toward changed skies.

—Eric Tinsay Valles, poet, editor and educator

Shilpa's is a voice that is at once intelligent and humane. Her work is dynamic and beautifully paced—a culturally rich and sensually stimulating experience that is, quite simply, a joy to read.

— Kita Das, Ol James
The Letter Review

Shilpa has beautifully meshed the world she grew up in and with the world she currently calls home. She draws parallels between her childhood by recalling memories of Little India and her Amma, and finds joy in how technology keeps the family together internationally. This collection of poems invites the reader into her world of duality, through her thoughtfully crafted words.

— Latha
Writer

Through richly evocative language and a keen eye for botanical metaphors, Shilpa embarks on a poignant exploration of movement and displacement, love and belonging, and the liminal spaces between migration and settlement. Buttressed by her transnational sensibilities, the personal and the universal entwine in her poetry, serving as a living, breathing testament to the intricate connections between place, identity, and the human experience. Like seeds that grow into mighty banyan trees, Shilpa's poems weave a tapestry of interwoven perspectives, akin to a reticulated network of aerial roots—one which branches out into a forest of reflection and imagination that takes root in the reader's mind.

— Ow Yeong Wai Kit
Educator and Poet  

These poems are lush with images and symbols from the two countries/cultures Shilpa deftly inhabits, her original home in India and the new in Singapore where she now lives. The diction reflects this reality,  the English enriched with untranslatable words from the mother country and allusions ( people, places, birds, trees etc), pointing to a restless, assimilative mind journeying to seek identities, roots, and loops in her rich past and present.
 
A cornucopia of poetry.

— Robert Yeo
 Poet and Playwright

Aerial Roots is a heartfelt homage to memories of the poet’s time spent in India, her country of origin. Set under the metaphoric, awning leitmotif of the banyan tree, Thapliyal’s poems offer the reader a universe with hidden windows that open unto an “undergrowth of decades”. One unlocks new meanings every time one enters her work. The poems speak of dislocation, migration, identity or the loss of it, and of the untethered state of our being, while also being contained within exquisite, precise language. The poet has a remarkable ability to draw connections between the personal and the cosmic, the present and the past, longing and reality. Her work is tender, incisive, clear-sighted and deeply intimate, replete with “stains and spills of plump memories”. Her poetry stuns us, wounds us, keeps us warm, while being unapologetically her own. The poems display amazing manoeuvring of the terrain of the page and the mind - a gentle flow, akin to a river’s graceful swirl on its journey. The memories shared with us are mesmerising and quintessentially, culturally, charmingly Indian. Indeed her poems hold “… lamps to moonless skies”. The collection is a milestone written on the existential nuances of life. Every line, an “aperture for departure”.

— Vinita Agrawal
Poet and Editor
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About Rosetta Cultures

Rosetta Cultures is an imprint by TrendLit Publishing that focuses on championing and bridging languages and the arts across cultures and communities.

Rosetta Cultures is currently based in Singapore, serving local and international readers.

Publication Information

ISBN: 978-981-94-3584-5 (Paperback)
CIP: Available with National Libarary Board, Singapore
Publisher / Imprint: Rosetta Cultures
Date of Publication: August 2025
Suggested Categorization: Poetry, Contemporary Literature, Singapore Literature
Format: 19cm (H) x 13cm (W), 100 pages

The theme “Forgotten Heritage” presents a strong statement of an otherwise significant heritage that was once a part of the everyday lives of Chinese migrants and their descendants. This book provides a snapshot of artefacts from various forms of Chinese puppet theatre, namely the ones in existence: Hainanese rod puppetry, Henghua string puppetry, Hokkien glove puppetry, Hokkien string puppetry, Teochew iron-stick puppetry, and the now defunct Hakka (Waijiang) string puppetry.

This book design aims to capture our original fondness for traditional Chinese puppets – the puppets, the fabrics, the embroidery, the song scripts, the props and the backstage. Layers of old looking fabric with embroidery and decades-old song script are designed as cover to present a tradition that has been here for a century. Through the use of intricate illustrations and vivid photographs, this book takes readers through a century-long history and the gathering of various puppet forms on our small island-state.

About This Is How We Come Back

One of a pair of lovers slices off his nipple on a dare. Both argue about enlightenment before it becomes too late, after retreating from the hostile world into a cave of wildly carnal fulfilment. Marrying mystical exploration and avant-garde homo-erotica, here is a prose-poem-as-fairy-tale in the modern day about the things few of us in love may see, insights about love and loss which pierce the amnesia of ordinary time.

About Cyril Wong

Cyril Wong is a poet whose works “embrace themes of love, alienation and human relationships of all kinds” (TIME magazine, 28 Nov. 2007). His books include Beachlight (Seagull Books, 2023) and This Side of Heaven (Epigram Books, 2020). A two-time recipient of the Singapore Literature Prize (2006 and 2016) and the National Arts Council’s Young Artist Award for Literature (2005), he completed his doctoral degree in English Literature at the National University of Singapore in 2012. His work was featured in Poems on the Underground in London (2022). His writings have appeared in journals like Poetry International, Poetry New Zealand, Ambit, Atlanta Review, as well as in anthologies by W. W. Norton and Everyman’s Library.

About Rosetta Cultures

Rosetta Cultures is an imprint by TrendLit Publishing that focuses on championing and bridging languages and the arts across cultures and communities.

Rosetta Cultures is currently based in Singapore, serving local and international readers.

Publication Information

ISBN: 978-981-18-8274-6 (Paperback)
CIP: Available with National Libarary Board, Singapore
Publisher / Imprint: Rosetta Cultures
Date of Publication: December 2024
Suggested Categorization: Poetry, Contemporary Literature, Singapore Literature
Format: 19cm (H) x 13cm (W), 68 pages

WHAT GIVES US OUR NAMES
by Alvin Pang
published by Math Paper Press

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He’d gotten the idea from a book, not unlike the one you last read and loved, whose lurid covers you have already forgotten. For a canvas, he used not his own skin but his very life, spending his days as if he were made up of the most telling bits of other people. To do this, he learned to watch quietly and look deeply, past the busy surfaces until he could discern the colours beneath, the ones that did not change. One by one he would name them as he wove them into his heart in the deep of night. He touched you once, borrowing pieces of your story in passing. They are here still, in case you wish to look.

About the Book

Sex workers in Singapore — and most places around the world — tend to be dehumanised, glamourised or sensationalised by the public and media alike. Rarely do mainstream narratives centre sex workers’ voices and agency. The Missing Anthology presents fifteen bold new voices from sex workers, whose writings resist society’s simplistic assumptions about sex work. In these works, authors recount their lived experiences, share their struggles and triumphs, and imagine different futures for the sex industry.

Born from an open call and writing workshops organised by Project X — the only non-profit organisation in Singapore that provides social, emotional, and health services to people in the sex industry — these pieces daringly experiment with form, genre, and perspective. In these pages, you’ll find two “chickens” discussing their dreams while blowing up a condom; pieces on the dynamics of domme-ing and servicing second-hand hearts; essays on the importance of activism and its obstacles; short fiction exploring fantasies of violent liberation; tender letters to loved ones and younger selves that reflect on their journeys and how far they’ve come.

The Missing Anthology re-centres sex workers’ voices from the margins, bringing them into the conversation about an industry often treated as illicit and taboo. By doing so, it aims to address issues of inequality, social and economic mobility, stigmatization, and safety that are fuelled by misconceptions about sex workers and their profession.

Advance Praise

"I’ve been a sex worker since 2011, and even I found my eyes opened reading this collection. The stories, vignettes, and poems within feel like whispers of secrets, fragments of dreams, or the kind of raw, unfiltered honesty you only get from a deep chat with an old friend. Through the voices of Singapore’s sex workers, this remarkable anthology reveals the incredible diversity of joy, rage, hope, and humanity that exists in our lives.

Too often, others try to tell our stories for us — flattening them into stereotypes or sensationalised clichés. But this collection refuses to let those distant assumptions speak. These are our stories, told in our voices, with all the complexity and richness of lived experience. Reading it was deeply moving, at times heartbreaking, and profoundly real.

It is a rare privilege to see the world through these eyes — to be reminded of the shared, challenging, and beautiful gift of life in all its forms. I am honoured to recommend this work. It is vital, human, and, above all, true."

EVA OH, also known as 'Mistress Eva' — award winning International Dominatrix

"An inter-generational, inter-genre, and inter-spatial exploration of the lives of sex workers and their labour conditions in Singapore. Exciting, intimate, endearing, vengeful, repressed, and cathartic all at once, The Missing Anthology reflects the sweeping diversity of sex workers' experiences, motivations, and lives. From the streets of 80s red light districts in Singapore, the online chat rooms of the aughts, and the transgressive imagination of the empowered millennial, the anthology is a landmark publication that stabs a stiletto heel against the singular story and image of a deliberately misunderstood labour class. The stories of sex workers strain against a society’s ability or inability to accept its own desires and the people who work to fulfil them. This book is as necessary a reading as any about the nation, for behind these stories, the country finds an unwritten one of its own."

DIANA RAHIM — visual artist, writer, community worker and editor of Beyond The Hijab

About the Editors

Vanessa Ho (she/they) joined Project X in 2011 and became its executive director in 2019. Her tenure at Project X has provided her many valuable opportunities to meet and connect with sex workers in Singapore and around the world. She has also written and spoken extensively about sex work, human trafficking, rape culture, and LGBTQ rights in Singapore. Vanessa holds the view that if people can speak about sex, gender, and sexuality in open and in non-judgmental ways, society will become a safer place for everyone.

Raksha Mahtani (they/them) is a researcher-writer-facilitator and vice-president on the board of Project X. Notable contributions include working on the organisation's membership model, the voluntary industry exit programme, and report writing. Their master’s thesis research examines labour market hierarchies in Singapore’s sex industry, with research interests that nestle at the intersections of social inequality, friendship, migration, feminism, and multiracialism. Raksha has been published in rivulet 10 and Exhale, and has also performed spoken word as part of Sekaliwags and Mass Hysteria.

nor (they/them) is the Programmes Manager at Project X. Their favourite part of working at Project X is being able to experience the generosity shown by sex workers in telling their stories. Outside of Project X, nor is a multidisciplinary artist, poet and 1/6th of the Studio Ong collective.

'OTHERS' IS NOT A RACE (3RD PRINTING)
by Melissa De Silva
published by Math Paper Press
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What is a Eurasian? Are Eurasians Singaporean? What does it mean to be a Eurasian living in Singapore?

While having existed in Singapore as long as any other community, Eurasians, who comprise less than one percent of the population, still remain a fairly obscure group to many Singaporeans.

'OTHERS' IS NOT A RACE is a tapestry that weaves together the multiple genres of narrative fiction, creative nonfiction, literary food writing and family memoir, to offer insight into the micro-minority Eurasian community through the intensely personal lens of the writer's own experience living and growing up as a Eurasian in Singapore. Throughout are interwoven the themes of memory, loss, language, identity and cultural reclamation.

Similarly, it is a reflective and provocative journey of self-discovery; a journey the reader may also take to explore what it means to exist at the confluence of being Singaporean and being Eurasian, and to interrogate the liminal space between two cultures, Asian and European, occupied by this community