Every individual, regardless of age or background, deserves access to the transformative power of poetry. Over the years, we’ve seen poets gain confidence, find their community, and establish themselves through initiatives such as poetry.sg, which aims to preserve and honour the contributions and legacy of poets in our local literary scene.
poetry.sg
poetry.sg has catalogued its 100th profile, and looks forward to including many more to come.
poetry.sg is a growing online database of Singapore poets. Since its inception, poetry.sg has become an invaluable resource for over 270,000 individuals, establishing itself as an essential tool for students, educators, researchers, and Singapore literature enthusiasts. Currently, the platform features the works of 100 poets, complete with their biographies, bibliographies, critical introductions, and selected poems. The poets featured span a range of languages, including English, Malay, and Chinese. In the near future, we are hoping to add profiles of Tamil poets.
poetry.sg continually evolves the way readers engage with poetry and elements of our poetic history (?)
poetry.sg encourages readers to encounter poetry in varied ways through special features such as Track Changes which prompts poets to revisit old poems, resulting in surprising and poignant revisions and reflections; HK-SG Digital Travel Bubble paired poets from Hong Kong and Singapore to create a digital poetry experience that sought to transport readers between the twin cities; Dead Poets' Society assembles poets across the generations in an effort to memorialise and revitalise Singapore’s literary canon; and Edgeland Visible traces poetry that explores the impact of modernisation encroaching on nature and the unique ecologies it creates.
The team is currently exploring adding potential features on “migrant” poetry, deaf poetry, and children’s poetry in the near future, to shed light on and guide readers through these elements of Singapore’s poetic history.
poetry.sg honours the contributions of our local poets by archiving them for future generations to enjoy.
poetry.sg also hosts an extensive collection of multimedia content, totaling 276 uploads, which archives significant moments in Singapore’s spoken word history, interviews with prominent poets, along with readings of their own work. The poetry.sg Youtube channel also celebrates the legacy of poets who have passed on. Recent uploads include documenting the launch event of Waves Rising: Collected Works of Ho Poh Fun & Responses.
poetry.sg prides itself on making quality content to introduce readers to our local poets.
poetry.sg actively uploads quality critical introductions to our local poets’ literary oeuvres, written by contributors through painstaking research and carefully reviewed by its editors and academic advisors.
SingPoWriMo
Though SingPoWriMo takes place in April, its impact on the community lasts all year.
SingPoWriMo serves as a launching pad for poets, with participants going on to receive prizes, form writing groups together, organise their own literary initiatives, and receive publication opportunities. Lifelong friendships have been formed through SingPoWriMo, and it thrives thanks to the dedication of passionate volunteers. Aptly described in The Straits Times, “The month truly comes alive thanks to daily prompts by poet-moderators, and how the SPWM community rises to the occasion – not just penning their own pieces, but commenting on others’ works with encouragement or helpful criticism.”
SingPoWriMo fosters a vibrant community of poets across Singapore.
Singapore Poetry Writing Month (SingPoWriMo) is a 30-day poetry writing challenge held every April. Through fun and fresh poetry challenges, SingPoWriMo reaches both amateurs and veterans alike who encourage each other to write daily poems, experiment, and demonstrate that poetry is for everyone. Since its inception in 2014, SingPoWriMo has grown to a community of 9,500 members. Over the past five years alone, 12,500 new poems were written during SingPoWriMo—that’s 2,500 new poems every year! With your support, we hope to keep this community thriving for many years to come and reach even more people in 2025.
We’ve always believed that poetry is for everyone, and everyone has a story to tell.
Your support matters
The lasting impact of SingPoWriMo:
zer0sleep formed in 2018, after meeting through SingPoWriMo. They meet regularly at Sing Lit Station to discuss and critique each others’ work, as well as attend writing masterclasses.
INVEST IN THE FUTURE
Our initiatives have made a significant impact on our community and the next generation of writers and readers. With your support, we aim to sustain the operations for SingPoWriMo and poetry.sg for many years to come - so school curriculums can continue using poetry.sg and SingPoWriMo to introduce students to Singapore’s rich literary landscape and inspire them to write poetry themselves!
PLATFORM DIVERSE VOICES
poetry.sg currently archives a selection of English, Malay, and Chinese language poets. Donations to this campaign will go directly towards enriching our archive by introducing Tamil poetry to reflect Singapore’s diverse linguistic and cultural landscape. Your support will help us commission critical introductions to ten Tamil language poets and publish them on the poetry.sg database.
PROMOTE SINGAPORE WRITING INTERNATIONALLY
In 2024, the poetry.sg editorial team showcased Singapore poetry to an international audience of writers and readers at Poesiefestival Berlin. With your support, we aim to create more opportunities to promote Singapore poetry on the global stage through more international collaborations.
Testimonials
“SingPoWriMo is the perfect stepping stone to increase accessibility of poetry and the Sing Lit scene in a relatively comfortable way, a conducive training ground for new poets, and a space that turns casual poets into ones that get published in anthologies or an entire manuscript.” - Skylar
“[poetry.sg] conveys what I take to be the website's intention really well: to celebrate the rich and continually evolving poetry of Singapore. I've tried to emphasise this about local literature as a whole in our seminars. For a small country which has been shaped through necessity by pragmatic aims and economic and practical concerns - survival initially and then development and, more recently, re-development - the literature and the poetry, which I'm especially familiar with, has somehow managed to be such a high quality… The website has been a marvellous resource for me to dip into whenever I want that boost or I'm feeling like I want to tweak my seminar notes. It's a great comfort to know that there's such a professional and well-maintained website to inspire me and remind me of the richness, wit and vibrancy of Singapore's poetry.” - Brendan Buxton (Module Leader, SUSS & SIM)
“I am a teacher in Singapore and am a longtime fan of your website. I've always felt so proud that you have done such amazing work all these years to champion SingLit. I would love to contribute to your cause and help by supporting your efforts to make SingLit accessible.” …. “ I most certainly have found poetry.sg very useful in my teaching and have used it extensively to introduce SingLit to my students.” - Elizabeth Scott, Chatsworth International School
“S@BER was formed as an official writing group after Singapore Poetry Writing Month in 2017. We've been able to tap into various resources to support our writing, such as using the SLS premises for our monthly workshops. We've also had the pleasure of attending a dedicated poetry workshop facilitated by Desmond Kon in 2019. Without SLS, we would not have had regular meetings and the opportunity to grow as writers and as a community.” - S@BER
We treasure every story shared, and every community built
through the art of writing poetry.
Highlights
The poetry.sg team shares about their work at Poesiefestival Berlin.
Sing Lit Station staff shares about poetry.sg to student-teachers from NIE at Intro to Sing Lit Day 2024.
A flashmob poetry reading. SingPoWriMo participants share their poems about public transport.
SingPoWriMo’s Junior Moderator team bond over lunch. The team is responsible for monitoring the platform to ensure it is fun and safe for everyone. Photo by Tan Yuu Shane.
Stephanie Chan at Celebrating Ten Years of SingPoWriMo, presented at Singapore Writers Festival 2023. Photo by Nicholas Yeo.