Join Ethos Books for the Singapore launch of Commonwealth, Theophilus Kwek’s latest poetry collection.
The afternoon unfolds with Theophilus reading from the collection, before Cheng Nien Yuan and Crispin Rodrigues join him in a spirited conversation on poetry, memory, and the histories we carry. Stay on for a Q&A and book signing to round off the day.
One of Singapore’s oldest public housing estates, the name “Commonwealth” also gestures to the long tail of the British Empire and still-potent dreams of equitable distribution. Theophilus Kwek’s Commonwealth uncovers rich seams of history, replete with conquests, tragedies and shared visions of the future. Taking its starting-point as the massive Bukit Ho Swee fires of the 196os – an event as deeply seared into the history of the poet’s family as the nation’s own – Commonwealth traces the dislocations and relocations that have come before it, and in its wake.
Theophilus’s earlier poetry collections dealt with questions of personal rootedness and larger-scale displacement. With his signature adeptness in poetic form, Theophilus embarks on a new departure with Commonwealth, drawing on a wide array of documentary and oral history sources to address upheavals of individual and collective lives within our densely populated city.
📍Venue: Thryft Hub
🏢 Address: 120 Lower Delta Road #01-15, Singapore 169208
🗓️ Date: Saturday, 12 July 2025
🕛 Time: 10.00 am - 11.30 am
🎟️ Admission: Free with registration
🐝 Dress Code (optional): Put on your little accessories!
More info and register here: https://www.eventbrite.sg/e/launch-of-little-things-second-edition-tickets-1370613966269
In this updated and expanded edition of beloved poetry anthology Little Things, poets look afresh at things mundane and universal, from birth to growing up and first love to old age and death.
Arranged in seven broad sections—Little Things, Growing Up, People Around Us, Going Places, Love and Loss, On Words and Our Earth—this anthology will appeal to readers both young and old with poems that are quirky, delightful, sad, reflective and timely.
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