INDEX: ARCHIVED INTRODUCTIONS
The more we continue to update our website, the more we find ourselves amassing a small collection of out-of-date critical introductions; some of them represent the very first critical material on older poets ever written in a long, long time. In the spirit of archiving: here they are.
CRITICAL INTRODUCTION / HO POH FUN
Written by Daryl Qilin Yam
Dated 4 Nov 2015
Ho Poh Fun was a teacher, poet, and writer of prose. Educated at Tanjong Katong Girls and Raffles Institution, she went on to receive a Masters in English from the National University of Singapore in 1987 and became a teacher at Raffles Junior College. In 1996, she won the Commended Work in Poetry award from the National Book Development Council of Singapore…
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CRITICAL INTRODUCTION / KOH JEE LEONG
Written by Zhang Jieqiang
Dated 4 Nov 2015
Born and raised in Singapore, Koh left the country in 1989 to read English at the University of Oxford, and returned to teach English Language and English Literature at a secondary school, where he later became Department Head, then Vice-Principal. In 2003, he undertook, and completed in two years, an MFA in Creative Writing at Sarah Lawrence College. He later moved to Queens, New York, and then to Manhattan, where he now lives and teaches…
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CRITICAL INTRODUCTION / MADELEINE LEE
Written by Nuraliah bte Norasid
Dated 4 Nov 2015
Madeleine Lee “has been called a financial whiz” who “also writes poetry,” a juxtaposition that makes her an “oddity in Singapore” (y grec 87). Lee has more than two decades of experience in managing public and private equities, on top of which the serial entrepreneur has launched her own ventures, all while writing poetry, which she has been doing since the age of thirteen. However, it was only after joining a writing programme by the National Arts Council and with encouragement by her mentor, Suchen Christine Lim, that she first published her work in the 2003 collection, a single headlamp…
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CRITICAL INTRODUCTION / MARC NAIR
Written by Ng Yi-Sheng
Dated 4 Nov 2015
Marc Nair is one of Singapore’s premier performance poets, and arguably the central figure of the local spoken word scene today. Much of his work consequently reflects the demands of the stage: “Smoking a Poem,” for instance, from his first collection Along the Yellow Line, employs rhyme, repetition, and a vivid, sensuous immediacy in its imagery…
