“Perhaps is not a path … and as such Perhaps walks me in circles” (Mok Zining, ‘Perhaps’).
Fellow poets Yeow Kai Chai and Mok Zining – winner and shortlistee, respectively, of this year’s Singapore Literature Prize – guide us through the tangled possibilities of the everyday with a selection of writing that is by turns whimsical, biting, and incisive. Mapping the territory between artists, between artworks, and between art and life itself, they lend us words to chart our own unexplored spaces.
Registration is at $38 for light bites and a drink, or $10 for admission only (FULL CAPACITY – please email info@appetitesg.com to book).
Speakers
Yeow Kai Chai is a poet, fiction writer, and editor. He has three poetry collections: Secret Manta (2001); Pretend I’m Not Here (2006); and One to the Dark Tower Comes (2020), which was awarded the 2022 Singapore Literature Prize. He has worked as editor-in-chief, entertainment editor and music reviewer in the media, including My Paper and The Straits Times. He co-wrote The Adopted: Stories from Angkor (2015) and Lost Bodies: Poems Between Portugal and Home (2016), with three other authors. A co-editor of Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, he was Festival Director of Singapore Writers Festival from 2015 to 2018.
Mok Zining is obsessed with random things: orchids, arabesques, sand. Her first book, The Orchid Folios (Ethos Books 2020), was shortlisted for the 2022 Singapore Literature Prize in English Poetry. Currently, she is at work on an essay collection, The Earthmovers.
Convenor
Theophilus Kwek has published four poetry collections, two of which were shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize. His work has appeared in The Guardian, Times Literary Supplement, Mekong Review, and elsewhere. He serves as Poetry Editor of the Asian Books Blog, and his latest collection is Moving House (Carcanet Press).