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Commonwealth

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Commonwealth

  • Description
  • Praise
  • About the Author

  • 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.

  • “The poems read like grand allegories of displacement and relocation, and form a fine suite of place poems that will resonate with the experience of urban change beyond its slim plot of land.”
    —Shawn Hoo, The Straits Times

    “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

  • 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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Description

  • Description
  • Praise
  • About the Author

  • 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.

  • “The poems read like grand allegories of displacement and relocation, and form a fine suite of place poems that will resonate with the experience of urban change beyond its slim plot of land.”
    —Shawn Hoo, The Straits Times

    “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

  • 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.