POETRY
Featured
Mridula Sharma
This poem primarily aims to initiate discussion on the process of photographing the dead. Though necessary to document remnants of bodies that have been torn apart from genocidal violence, at what cost are tourists, viewers, and audiences engaging in the process of dehumanisation?
Tan Jing Min
This poem chronicles the author’s mending of an article of fast fashion - a physical, personal act of resistance against the cogs of global capitalism and the suffering others have to endure for us to continuously consume. This poem, too, seeks to resist.
Samuel Sim
This poem is a self-reflective response to intersecting crises happening all over the world, grappling with how one should reconcile with continuous feelings of grief and unjustness. ‘Lost and Found’ seeks to hold space for discomfort in hopes of finding solace, stretching our wildest (re)imaginings.
Suthida Chang
Inspired and catalysed by her own experiences as a young woman, Suthida Chang's poem ‘A W(e)man’ reproduces uncomfortable conversations about our bodies and appearances, shedding light on the misogynist attitudes towards how women ought to look, dress, act and behave, as well as how easily these types of conversations are normalised in social situations.
Christian Yeo
Following an internship in NGOs serving the red-light district and the homeless in Singapore, Christian Yeo began to learn about how vulnerable communities were disproportionately affected by Singapore’s circuit breaker measures. In his poem, ‘every unbroken thing’, Christian reckons with the faces behind the numbers, the people behind the arguments, and the lives whose evanescence and invisibility belie the strongest and most unbending of wills.
Jonathan Chan
‘crown’ was written in March 2020. At the time, the reality of a novel virus seemed distant in the minds of those living in Britain, but its justifiable potential for racist violence had begun to make its way into British cities. Reports of Chinatowns emptied of patronage, and harassment and violence of those of East Asian descent, whether British or international, began to proliferate.
Allison Haines
“When we love, when we die—are we not all the same?—we are one, we are different, we are nothing at all… I speak of the forgotten, the lost, the broken.”
Anushka Sisodia
This poem is an acknowledgement of people who have been displaced and whose lives have been torn apart by extreme weather events. Leaning on the stories of those who survived Typhoon Mangkhut in the Philippines in 2018, it seeks to reflect the world through the eyes of child after his home was destroyed by the storm, and the spaces he once believed to be safe and familiar were distorted into battered landscapes of confusion and loss.
Roseline Mgbodichinma
In this poem, Roseline Mgbodichinma sources the disappearances of the Chibok girls, Uwa, Tina, and Jennifer - writing for the girls and women in Nigeria that have been lost, brutalised and assaulted.