To Malaysia With Linebreaks

28 November 2020
8pm–9.30pm
The Substation’s Facebook & YouTube
Free admission

What does a Southeast Asian spoken word community look like, as online platforms break down the physical distance and geographical borders? The pandemic has changed the way live poetry is produced and performed in Singapore and all around the world. In the rubble and confusion of all this, online streaming platforms have created opportunities for the regional community of writers and performers to forge deeper connections. 

As part of Spoke and Bird, a regular spoken word series organised by Stephanie Dogfoot, To Malaysia With Linebreaks is the first of a two-part series that brings together 6 poets from Singapore and Malaysia. These poets will come together to premiere newly-created works that are a unique response to one another’s shared histories, shared borders and shared seas.

Featuring

May Chong (MY) X Margaret Devadson (SG)

May Chong writes poetry to tackle the heart and tickle the soul. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Rhysling Award, and published in multiple venues including Strange Horizons, Apparition Literary, Anathema Magazine, 2020: An Anthology (Fixi Novo) and My Lot is a Sky (Math Paper Press). When she's not at the keyboard, she enjoys birdwatching, great stories and terrible, terrible puns. May's first micro-chapbook, the nature-themed Seed, Star, Song, is out now from Ghost City Press.

Margaret Devadason is a Singaporean poet whose work has appeared in anthologies including SG Poems 2017-2018 and Anima Methodi. Shortlisted for the 2018 National Poetry Competition and the winner of the 2018 NTU Creative Writing Competition, Margaret contributed the winning piece of the 2019 Hawker Prize to the journal OF ZOOS.

Dhinesha Karthigesu (MY) X Wahid Al-mamun (SG)

Dhinesha Karthigesu is a Kuala Lumpur based multidisciplinary storyteller currently working on his third theatre play. He is deeply invested in telling queer and Malaysian stories while holding space for conversations on identity and creativity. He is the host of The Creative Curry Podcast and Malaysia's first and only National Poetry Slam Champion. Dhinesha has been featured at schools, universities, and festivals. In 2019, he co-created his first visual arts installation, was featured in an inflight magazine and his work got turned into a comic strip. So far, in 2020 his work has been featured on HowlRound Theatre Commons, Vice India, and Vice Asia. You can find him online at dhinesha.com.

Wahid Al Mamun is a Singaporean poet of Bangladeshi origin whose writing is centered around migration, identity, and his parents. (What would Freud say?) His poetry can be found on various SingPoWriMo journals, QLRS, as well as several anthologies such as "Food Republic" and "700 Lines." His poetry has also won an honorable mention at the 2018 Hawker Prize for Southeast Asian Poetry. He is currently studying Anthropology major at the University of Chicago.

Lily Jalmaludin (MY) X Dustin Wong (SG)

Lily Jamaludin is a campaigner at Amnesty International Malaysia, and moonlights as a writer/poet. She was featured as an "emerging writer" at the 2018 George Town Literary Festival, has been published in Halal if You Hear Me (Haymarket Books), Straits Eclectic (Gerakbudaya), and The Grinnell Review. In 2017, her short play "Our Compliance" took the Mercedez-Benz Creative Excellence Award at KLPAC's Short+Sweet Theatre Festival. Previously, she helped run If Walls Could Talk, Kuala Lumpur's monthly spoken word poetry event, and facilitated poetry sessions with KL UnRepresented, a multi-genre workshop exploring unrepresented narratives in Kuala Lumpur.

Dustin Wong's work has been featured in A Luxury We Cannot Afford (Math Paper Press 2015), SingPoWriMo (Math Paper Press, 2016, 2018), The Crust Catalog (Volume 1: Food & Sex), Words: Lost and Found (Coffee Stained Press, 2016), Quarterly Literary Review Singapore (QLRS), and The Eunoia Review. They are also part of the writing group known as The Atom Collective. Contrary to popular belief, their favourite colour is not green.

Stephanie Dogfoot (Stephanie Chan)

Author of Roadkill for Beginners, Stephanie Dogfoot (also known as Stephanie Chan) is both a Singapore (2010) and UK Slam (2012) champion. Her work has been featured at the Melbourne Spoken Word Festival, the George Town Literary Festival, Ubud Writers and Readers Festival, Glastonbury Festival and many others. She has toured Germany, Australia, Southeast Asia and most recently, North America with her poetry. She currently curates and hosts a monthly poetry night called Spoke & Bird which features local and international poets. As a stand up comedian, she has been performing and hosting regularly since 2015. She also runs a comedy and storytelling night called Siao Char Bors which aims to highlight female and LGBTQ comedians.