Overview

A neighbourhood containing Singapore’s oldest public housing estates, a catchphrase for the dream of equitable distribution, the long tail of the British Empire: the word ‘Commonwealth’ uncovers rich seams of history, replete with conquests, tragedies and once-potent visions of the future. Commonwealth takes as its starting-point the massive Bukit Ho Swee fires of the 196os – an event as deeply seared into the history of Kwek’s family as the nation’s own – and traces the dislocations and relocations that have come before it, and in its wake. Kwek’s earlier poetry collections dealt with questions of personal rootedness and larger-scale displacement; still formally adept, Commonwealth is a new departure, drawing on a wide array of documentary and oral history sources to address upheavals of individual and collective lives within one of the world’s most densely populated cities.

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9781800174832

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‘His poems are keenly aware that the scariest place to exist is on the edges of a space, but the stately, serene pacing should not blind you to the keen political intelligence at work.’ – Rishi Dastidar, The Guardian

Author Information

Theophilus Kwek is a writer, editor and translator based in Singapore. His work has been published in The Guardian, Times Literary Supplement, The Straits Times, and elsewhere; and performed at the Royal Opera House. Two of his previous collections of poetry were shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize, while his pamphlet, The First Five Storms, won the inaugural New Poets’ Prize. In 2023, he was the youngest writer and first Singaporean to be awarded the Cikada Prize by the Swedish Institute, for poetry that ‘defends the inviolability of life’. He is a member of the Folio Academy, and part of the Forbes 30 Under 30 Class of 2024.

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