In its widest manifestation, the character 界 / jiè refers to the world at large, the universe which we all live in. Across its continuum of meanings, it also alludes to endless worlds, ranging from an imagined dominion of one’s mind to geographical and man-made boundaries which separate nations and peoples. In this sense, it reflects the current world order, with all the attendant tensions, transgressions and opportunities as communities trek across lands and cross waters, either as worldly citizens, refugees or migrants who seek better lives elsewhere. The Singapore Writers Festival revels in the realm of imagination and beseeches writers, thinkers and audiences to look inward and outward, and explore multiple possibilities of reading, writing and living.
The Singapore Writers Festival started in 1986 as a biennial festival. Now held yearly, the festival is a much anticipated event on the cultural calendar, presenting the world’s major literary talents to Singaporeans while shining a spotlight on home grown and Southeast Asian creative talents. Over the years, the Festival has become an exciting meeting point of writers, academics and thinkers in a choice spread of panel discussions, workshops, lectures and performances in 10 days. It has hosted literati the likes of Nobel Prize winner Gao Xingjian, Whitbread Book Awards First Novel winner Tash Aw, British poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy, Nebula winner Neil Gaiman and Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Cunningham.
The Singapore Writers Festival is one of the few multi-lingual literary festivals in the world, celebrating the written and spoken word in Singapore’s official languages – English, Malay, Chinese and Tamil. This year, the Festival will be housed in the Civic District amongst historic buildings such as The Arts House, The National Gallery and the Asian Civilisations Museum.
Join Sing Lit Station at our events:
Launch: Call and Response, edited by Rolinda Onates Espanola, Zakir Hossain, and Joshua Ip. 11 Nov, 2.30pm, The Arts House (POP Stage). Free. Singapore is a migrant nation. Who truly deserves the title “local”, and how far removed is your average “local poet” from the term “migrant worker”? The anthology gathers the voices of more than thirty “migrant” poets and pairs them with a creative response from the same number of “local” writers.
Panel: Poetry By the People, For the People, feat. Harini V, Stephanie Dogfoot, Gu Xing Zi, Joshua Ip (moderator). 6 Nov 2018, 8.30pm, The Arts House (POP Stage). Free. Writing movements, such as the Singapore Poetry Writing Month (SingPoWriMo), 一首诗的时间 and SingPoWriMo Tamil, have proliferated online. Modelled after the international NaNoWriMo, these groups challenge poets to write a poem daily for 30 days in their respective languages. This panel comprising organisers of these groups discuss the challenges of these movements which have transformed conventional modes of poetry production.
Launch: SingPoWriMo 2018: The Anthology, edited by Stephanie Dogfoot, Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingde, Ng Yi-Sheng, and Rodrigo Dela Pena Jr. 6 Nov, 1.30pm, The Arts House (Gallery II). Free. For the fifth time, thousands of poets in a facebook group have flooded the month of April with torrential poetry, and the distillation of that deluge is making its way to you.
VENUE: Various
ADDRESS: Various
EVENT WEBSITE: Singapore Writers Festival
DATE AND TIME
2–11 Nov 2018, various times