The first four months
It’s been four hectic, happy months since Moving House launched: a third of a year that has brought such unexpected joy and trial. The book itself has had quite a journey - the poems written between Oxford and Singapore (with stopovers in Reykjavik, Hong Kong, London, etc), published in Manchester, and launched on Zoom, with me reading from my dining table. Now that the brilliant Carcanet team have put the launch video online (scroll to the bottom of this post!), I thought I’d mark the occasion with some reflections.
Moving House comes four years after my third collection, Giving Ground. The poems themselves are three years apart: I sent off the manuscript for Giving Ground in 2015, and Moving House in 2018. In between, I wrapped up my undergrad degree, finished an MSc, and came home to Singapore for National Service. I also lost two grandparents, changed addresses, and did a fair amount of growing up. In many ways, these books were written by two different poets, with quite different ways of relating to the world.
Of course, the two books have some things in common, such as a tendency to draw on the variegated histories of Singapore and Southeast Asia. But Giving Ground is, I think, the more starry-eyed of the two, a book of travel writing that relies on new places and encounters as a foil for self-discovery. Moving House tries to be more circumspect. It shines a light on the past and present inequities that allow some to move across the globe with ease, while others face more challenging, sometimes fatal, conditions.
I’ve been fortunate to have had some very kind and perceptive readers for the poems in Moving House, both before and after publication. At least one surprised friend has pointed out that, while most interviews and reviews have focused on the book’s take on migration issues, the poems also deal with many other kinds of histories - from ancient myth to family lore. It’s certainly my most personal book, and also contains the only serious love poem I’ve ever written (hint: not the one titled ‘Love Poem’…).
The curious thing about books is that once they are published, they take on new lives of their own, and so do you. They become part of a larger conversation, which includes the books that come before and after them, as well as the swirl of voices that surrounds them, borrowing from and adding to the ideas they contain. You, the writer, also achieve a new freedom. You can finally relate to your own books as just another reader, and not their awkward parent. You’re free to grow into a new person. And when you rejoin that conversation later on, it is with a new voice, and with new things that need to be said.
Already, the months since Moving House was published have brought new surprises. In last month’s post, I shared a little about the collaborations I’ve been working on - one of which will launch in a fortnight, as part of the National Opera Studio’s ‘12:42’ programme. I’ve also shared elsewhere (perhaps unwisely!) about the new poems I’ve been working on, which extend my preoccupations with history and movement, but within the space of a single city, rooting themselves more in this island where I now live.
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More adventures await! In the meantime, if you weren’t able to catch the online launch of Moving House back in July, tune in below to hear me discussing the collection with dear friend and phenomenal poet Mary Jean Chan: