Sunday 24 August
5.30 – 7.15pm
Australian Poetry Centre
Glenfern’
417 Inkerman Rd
East St Kilda
Victoria, Australia.

Fresh from the Melbourne Writer’s Festival: Join 6 of Singapore’s most prominent contemporary writers, as they bring you on an insider’s tour through their unique, surprising and sometimes unnerving city-state at the crossroads of the world.

Featuring: a bold new collection by Singapore’s Poet Laureate, Professor-Emeritus Edwin Thumboo; and OVER THERE: the Singapore-Australia bilateral anthology!

Presented by Ethos Books, Singapore in conjunction with the Asia and Pacific Writers Network and the Australian Poetry Centre

This event is in conjunction with the Australian Poetry Centre’s Salon with Jill Jones, Ken Taylor and David Brooks. This spectacular double begins at 4pm at Glenfern. Cost $7/$10.

Edwin Thumboo
Edwin Thumboo is Emeritus Professor and Professorial Fellow, Department of English Language and Literature, National University of Singapore, and Visiting Professor, Department of Chinese Translation and Linguistics, City University of Hong Kong. Still Travelling is his sixth book of poems.

Isa Kamari
An architect by day, Isa Kamari works deep into the night, writing stories, play scripts, songs and poetry. Besides his own prolific output, Isa is actively involved in the promotion of the Malay Language as well as the arts in Singapore. He belts out a mean song and keeps in touch with his fans through his website, http://www.isakamari.com

Isa was conferred the S.E.A. Write Award in Bangkok, Thailand in 2006. He regularly reads poetry and presents papers on literature and the arts in international conferences and seminars. Isa was awarded the Cultural Medallion (highest award for literature in Singapore) by the Singapore government in 2007.

Alvin Pang
Alvin Pang is a poet, writer and editor based in Singapore.  His publications include Testing the Silence (Ethos Books 1997) and City of Rain (Ethos Books 2003), and several anthologies, including No Other City: The Ethos Anthology of Urban Poetry (Ethos Books 2000) and Love Gathers All (Ethos/Anvil 2002).  His work has been featured in major festivals, publications and performances around the world.  A Fellow of the University of Iowa International Writing Program (2002), he was named National Arts Council Young Artist of the Year (Literature) in 2005, and awarded the Singapore Youth Award (Arts and Culture) in 2007.  He is co-editor, along with John Kinsella, of the new anthology, OVER THERE: Poems from Singapore and Australia (Ethos Books 2008)

Aaron Lee
Aaron Lee Soon Yong is a prize-winning poet and author of the poetry collections “A Visitation of Sunlight” (1998) and “Five Right Angles” (1998). The former was voted one of 1997’s best books by The Straits Times. He is also the co-editor of Singapore’s best-selling anthology of urban poetry “No Other City”, as well as the award-winning Singapore- Philippines poetry anthology “Love Gathers All’. Aaron Lee is also well regarded as a writing mentor. He can be contacted via the writers’ group http://www.createlevoyage.com.

Angeline Yap
Angeline Yap has been writing poetry and contributing to various publications since the 1970’s, including, most recently, the Atlanta Review, The Poetry Billboard, Softblow, IDEYA and the Quarterly Literary Review Singapore.  She is one of two Asians whose work is featured in the inaugural issue of the journal, Fulcrum (Cambridge, Massachussets).  Her work is being studied together with the work of 3 other Asian poets in a Cross-cultural project by the Fergusson Centre in Leeds, UK. Her poems have been included in the well received More Than Half the Sky, the award-winning Love Gathers All, No Other City, and now, in Over There : Poems from Singapore and Australia. Angeline’s poems have also been translated into Tamil and Mandarin, and set to music for performance by choirs in Singapore and internationally.

Madeleine Lee
MADELEINE LEE, 45, has been an investment manager for 22 years, She is
also Independent Director of several Singapore government-owned companies and on the Boards of several non-profit arts and charitable organisiations.

Madeleine has published 3 books of poetry : “a single headlamp”(2003) and
“ fifty three/zero three” (2004), the latter launched with a performed read
directed by Krishen Jit . “y grec” is her third book, co-written with Eleanor
Wong. Her fourth book “ synaesthesia” will be published in August 2008.
In 2004, her poem “coffee” was adapted into a short film, “1000 Words”, on
Arts Central TV. She has read in Singapore Writers’ Fest 2002, Wordfeast 2004,
the Kuala Lumpur Lit Festival 2004 and her work was included in a festival
commissioned performance, ‘Riding the Nice Bus’. In 2006, she was invited to the Indonesia International Poetry Festival and the Christchurch Writers Festival.
She was on the Steering Committee of Singapore Writers’ Festival(SWF)05, and
conceived ‘2nd Link’–a performance of Singapore/Malaysian literature. For the
2007 SWF, she worked with theatre group Cake Productions to turn ‘y grec’ into
a 60 minute theatrical production. This was nominated for the ST Life Theatre
awards in 2008.

Madeleine also initiated N.O.R.A., (National Library Online Repository of
Artistic Works), an e-repository of Singapore literature launched in Jan 05 by
National Library (http://www.nlb.gov.sg). Madeleine was panel speaker in Singapore
Ministry of Education (MoE) organized “ Falling in Love with Words” symposium in June 06, and has conducted poetry workshops in the MoE Creative Arts Programme in May 07 and at various schools.