Moving House
Theophilus Kwek
Carcanet Press: 2020
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These poems are polymorphous probes into memory. In form they morph from villanelle to dramatic monologue, and in memory they reach into Theophilus Kwek’s own and those of national cultures, their collective slippages and conflicts. ‘It always turns out that much is salvageable’ is borrowed from John Ashbery as epigraph for Kwek’s poem ‘Chinese Whispers’, while the book is dedicated, ‘For those who build our houses / and those who believe in keeping them open’. Many of these poems, cross-cultural in scope and postcolonial in critique, set out to ‘salvage’ or reclaim moments of history, ‘keeping them open’ by imaginative inspection, drawing them out of the margins where they had been left in official documents and newspaper reports. There are quieter poems and translations, but it’s the contested, events-laden poems that dominate the collection.

• Tags: Issue 20, Michael Freeman, Singapore