parsetreeforestfire

parsetreeforestfire is a bilingual book of poetry in which poems in Singlish occupy one side of the book, and poems in English on the other. Conventionally such a book functions as a way for a person to learn a new language, but it remains to be seen if translation has successfully occurred, or if the book even intends to teach any reader how to speak either language. Instead, if poetry is intense attention to language, then this book can be considered to be the product of such scrutiny on the languages the book is written in.

Shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize for Poetry 2020