In my younger years, poetry was a flower: gather enough of them and you got yourself a pretty bouquet. When I think of my first collection of poems, I see a compendium of (ostensibly) pretty lines penned by someone I scarcely recognise, much less know, someone whose primary purpose seemed to be getting praised for his work. My mind turns to art, artifice, artificiality. Transparent Strangers came out almost 7 years ago. Much has changed since then. These days, I find myself writing less. Life took over, for one. Bills don't pay on their own and being a published poet holds no exemption from holding down a job. Another reason for the hiatus is an inclination, a shift in focus if you will, to write about things that actually mean something to others, not just myself. Like cut flowers doomed to wilt in an exquisite crystal vase, works of self-absorption languish in the glare of their vanity. There are enough highfaluting poesies as it is. No need for more. If I am to write, may it endure. Still, the fact remains that I haven't been writing. Am I becoming rusty, I wonder. I fear the embers in the firepit of my mind are turning dark and cold. Probing the ashes with a pencil now and then, I see in the paper-white silence anxiety. If I stop writing, doe that mean I stop thinking? And if thinking ceases, how then do I make sense of my place in this increasingly discordant world? I turn away. Now is not the time for such dim meanderings. My words have gone silent, but that's because they are lodged deep in the desert—given time, the right impetus will thunder across the landscape, heralding an explosion of every colour you could imagine. An oasis will emerge and the creatures will come. When that happens, my work will be there for all to share. Until then, I continue to live, learn, prepare. Speaking of flowers, Maria Sequeira Mendes, one of the editors of Jogos Florais, reached out to me sometime in August 2018 requesting for an interview, as well as permission to feature my poems on their site. Jogos Florais is a Portuguese literary criticism and poetry website that embraces poems from different parts of the world. In line with their cosmopolitan ethos, the Jogos Florais team produced a special Singapore poetry issue, which you can read here. As Maria was visiting Singapore at that time, we managed to meet for coffee. Although poetry was the common link bridging the both of us, we ended up chatting about Gardens by the Bay and Pão de Queijo (Brazilian cheese buns), among other things. It's astounding, not to mention flattering, that a professor who teaches literature in another continent across the world read my work and liked it enough to want to speak with me in person. What's more, Jogos Florais translated some of my poems. What an honour! Words are bridges linking people, this much I believed, but to experience it first-hand in this fashion was nothing short of extraordinary.
Follow the links below to read: My interview with Jogos Florais (English | Portuguese) Jogos Florais' poetry picks (English | Portuguese)
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