Poetry, 61 pages
Published by Math Paper Press, 2016
Third printing, March 2024

Shortlisted for the 2018 Singapore Literature Prize (English Poetry)

Synopsis:

At the very start of us, I foresaw
every possible ending.

Professions is a poet's directory of heartbreak. The backbone of this collection is a cycle of fractured relationships, where professional preoccupations tear lovers apart as distrust and incomprehension brew. Set against this are glimpses of indestructible intimacy — between a mother, a granddaughter, and a friend.

Amanda Chong's poems observe the doomed practice of the heart: solitary experiences, never fully nor mutually understood until too late.

About the Author:

Amanda Chong is a lawyer trained in Cambridge and Harvard, who writes poems on her lunch breaks. A winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award, her poetry has been engraved on the Marina Bay Helix Bridge and included in the Cambridge International GCSE syllabus. Her writing has appeared in Monocle, the Harvard Journal of Law and Gender, The Straits Times and Quarterly Literary Review Singapore.