Joshua Ip (b. 1982)
SELECTED POEMS
excerpt from dante digestif singapura
III.
Tell me, shall I lead her to your anointed body, Dante?
Across the sea, did the stars, their weight, consume you, Dante?
Penghuni bulan (walau sabit, walau mengambang) penghuni syurga juga, ya Dante?
Without doubt or differentiation, what grates the sea of being Dante?
The lawyers are calling. You’ve paid your dues, haven’t you, Dante?
Is this the kind of standard you wanna give me, Dante?
But the just coexists in the unjust, haven’t you noticed, Dante?
How come even in fanfic your sex so boring ah, Dante?
Why ask everyone’s approval when it doesn't please your soul, Dante?
The corona of twelve souls interjected with viewpoints surrounding Trinity, Dante?
How did these burnished paths meet, or crown to equilibrium, Dante?
By this you recall the saints— how shall we remember Dante?
Find the centre, you said. But how many more circles, Dante?
The luminous red of Mars, like blood. Beautiful, isn’t it, Dante?
Go35 go53 hai2 dai2 go5 li5 go3 hai2 sai3 go5. dan5te35?
An elegy that ages like a stillborn child—for you, Dante?
E queste parole, fioriranno dove i nostri corpi stanno decadendo, Dante?
Diligite iustitiam [squawk?] qui iudicatis terrammm [plane brrrrrrrr]: spell, erase, dante.
M I B 4 H? U C D N? I Dante?
They fan embers not for sustenance but for wile faith, Dante!?
Now do you hear the music of paradise in silence, Dante?
Here you thought you’d climb a new sun didn’t you, Dante?
This is Paradise? Can a poem leap to reach mirages, Dante?
Disrobe shadows, absent, abandoned— who spins your truth between judgement, Dante?
Shall we believe that one day we will return home, Dante?
By reason of desire does goodness thus / thus arise for Dante?
Where will you hide when the flower eats its fruit, Dante?
But what secures this spinning halo? What holds us now, Dante?
And if the angels turned, would you look their way, Dante?
Time begets the sea / radiant, longing godhood /spring sleeps, calls— Dante?
Which mortal movement shall preserve the rheumatoid contemplations of thunder, Dante?
Lilies stain the pinking shears. Can we bear His jagged ante?
And after this recursive pilgrimage, have you been made worthy, Dante?
Translator’s Note: I was solicited for an anthology by Recent Work Press responding to Dante’s Divina Commedia, commemorating his 700th death anniversary in 2021. As I had not read Dante, I invited 100 Singapore writers to each “translate” one of the 100 Cantos into a single line. Constraints were imposed depending on the cantiche: Inferno poets had to write in imperative speech, Purgatorio poets had to craft a third-person statement, and Paradiso poets had to write in questions (These loosely map to the structure of the liwuli form). In a nod to the hendecasyllabic verse structure and terza rima of the original, each poet was asked to keep their line to 11 syllables, and end the line wih the word “Dante”. The result is this anthology-in-a-poem (-in-an-anthology) that digests and cannibalises poor dead Dante and spits him out in the forms and concerns of the global south. Can the subaltern speak? I don’t know, I still haven’t read Spivak. Or Dante.
The poem is the collective work of a hundred Singapore (loosely defined) poets. Prelude: Joshua Ip; Inferno – 1: Shawn Hoo, 2: Werner Kho, 3: Andrea Yew, 4: Samantha Toh, 5: Tommaso Federico Demarie, 6: Dennis Yeo; 7: Christopher Quek; 8: Drima Chakraborty; 9: Eva Lim; 10: Ian Chung; 11: Jolene Lum; 12: Kenneth Lim; 13: Leon Choo; 14: Nicolette Tan; 15: Ouyang Yingzhao; 16: Rohan Naidu; 17: Sandesh Kaur; 18: Abu Ubaidah; 19: Irie Aman; 20: Debabrota Basu; 21: Don Shiau; 22: Rajita Jay; 23: Kin Yunn; 24: Cee Zedby; 25: Bryan Ong Junyu; 26: Sean Francis Han; 27: Indah W. Yosevina; 28: Mark Goh; 29: Wahid Al Mamun; 30: Samuel Lee; 31: Hamid Roslan; 32: Teo Xiao Ting; 33: Rodrigo Dela Peña, Jr.; Purgatorio – 1: Jerrold Yam; 2: Joses Ho; 3: Valen Lim; 4: Lune Loh; 5: Paul Jerusalem; 6: Jollin Tan; 7: Leonard Ng; 8: Eric Valles; 9: Crispin Rodrigues; 10: Joshua Lim; 11: Anurak Saelaow; 12: Dustin Wong; 13: Iain Lim; 14: Riqi Hanzrudyn; 15: Tan E-Reng; 16: Philip Greenall; 17: Hidhir Razak; 18: Jennifer Anne Champion; 19: Naicy Candido; 20: Elizabeth Fen Chen; 21: Skylar Yap; 22: Felix Deng; 23: Elizabeth Fong; 24: Yolanda Yu; 25: Karisa Poedjirahardjo; 26: Y-Lynn Ong; 27: Mrigaa Sethi; 28: Sharlene Teo; 29: Haidee Roiles; 30: Cheyenne Alexandria Phillips; 31: Pamela Seong Koon; 32: Faith Christine Lai; 33: Zhang Ruihe; Paradiso – 1: Lee Jing-Jing; 2: Jonathan Chan; 3: Nabilah Said; 4: Michelle Tan; 5: Jia Han Tong; 6: Myko Philip; 7: Weiqi Chuah; 8: Tan Kuan Hian; 9: Lora Jane Arugay; 10: Irina Tjahjana; 11: Francine Wang; 12: Kevin Wong; 13: Migs Bravo-Dutt; 14: Arin Alycia Fong; 15: Margaret Louise Devadason; 16: Patricia Karunungan; 17: Jocelyn Suarez: 18: Michelle Lee; 19: Ashley Ho; 20: Muslim Sahib; 21: Inez Tan; 22: Nurul Amilin Hussain; 23: Sarah Mak; 24: Shalani Devi; 25: Amy Walter; 26: Al Lim; 27: Min Lim; 28: Jasmine Goh; 29: Letitia Chen; 30: Qamar Firdaus Saini; 31: David Wong; 32: Jack Xi; 33: Ally Chua.
by Joshua Ip
from Ownself Say Ownself: New and Selected Poems (2024)
