The Cikada Prize 2023

Last week, while I was on my honeymoon(!), I received an email from the Swedish translator Anna Gustafsson Chen with the happy news that I have been awarded the Cikadapriset, or Cikada Prize for 2023.

Chen, who chairs the prize jury, also shared the following generous citation:

“This year, we would like to award you the Cikada Prize, for a poetry that is both outward-looking and locally rooted, with a combination of lyrical precision and unfailing social commitment that places it firmly in the centre of history as well as our present age.”

The news has since been released on the Prize’s official website and Facebook page.

To say that I was surprised by the news would be an understatement. In recent years, the Prize — which is awarded annually to an East Asian poet, who ”in his/her poems defends the inviolability of life” — has gone to respected writers such as Kim Hyesoon (2021), Xi Xi (2019), and Xi Chuan (2018), whose book I recently reviewed for Cha. I am not only moved by the jury’s faith in my work, but also immensely humbled to have even been considered alongside these names.

The Prize has traditionally been awarded to poets writing in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, but the jury has previously made exceptions (for instance, with Vietnamese poets such as Ý Nhi and Mai Văn Phấn). Much more than validation of my own writing, I see this year’s Prize as a recognition of the wealth of writing from Singapore that grapples with questions of belonging and human dignity. I hope that it will bring to light the work of many of my peers who, through their writing, also seek to create spaces of welcome and community here in Singapore.

I understand that the Prize will be officially presented by the Swedish Embassy in Singapore, likely early next year. But in the meantime, I want to express my gratitude first to members of the jury (especially Henrik Enbohm, for championing Singapore writing), and all those behind the scenes who have worked hard to spotlight Singapore literature abroad. Also to the various publishers I’ve worked with, particularly at Carcanet and Ethos Books, for believing in my writing and giving it a space to flourish, in Singapore and elsewhere.

As ever: to all those who have taught and supported me, and guided me to see and write about what matters — my deepest thanks.