Book A Writer / Our Writers

ABOUT

Theophilus Kwek has published four volumes of poetry. He serves as Co-Editor of Oxford Poetry, and together with Joshua Ip and Tse Hao Guang, was also Co-Editor of UnFree Verse. His poems, translations, essays and reviews have appeared in The Guardian, The London Magazine, The Irish Examiner, the Asia Literary Review, and Berfrois.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

• 2017 – UnFree Verse (Singapore: Ethos Books, 2017)

• 2017 – The First Five Storms (UK: smith|doorstop, 2017)

• 2016 – Giving Ground (Singapore: Ethos Books, 2016)

• 2014 – Circle Line (Singapore: Math Paper Press, 2014)

ACHIEVEMENTS

• 2018 – Singapore Literature Prize (English Poetry) shortlist

• 2017 – Berfrois Poetry Prize, winner

• 2016 – New Poets' Prize, winner

• 2015 – Jane Martin Prize, winner

• 2014 – Singapore Literature Prize (English Poetry) shortlist

WORKSHOPS

NEITHER HERE NOR THERE: POETRY IN AN AGE OF MOVEMENT
For: all students; 5-25 pax
Availability: 2 / 3 hours per session; single session
Description: Consider how words, ideas, and stories have moved with people over time and space to find new homes. Even if we stay in one place all our lives, what might migration mean to us? Can we imagine other worlds and ways of living?
Learning Outcomes: Experience poems that come from other / unfamiliar traditions; think about what it means to respond sensitively to migration in our own writing.

THIS PLACE, DISPLACED: WRITING THE CITY WITH POETRY
For: all students; 5-25 pax
Availability: 2 / 3 hours per session; single session
Description: How has our city changed - visually, architecturally, socially and psychologically? Where do people gather, remember, and make meaning? How do we engage not just with what changes, but with change itself?
Learning Outcomes: learn to tell life-stories through places, and the stories of places through our lives; write a poem that introduces someone to a lost place – and what it means to you or those close to you.

LEARNING JOURNEYS

WALKING ON WATER: POEMS ALONG THE SINGAPORE RIVER
For: all students; 5-25 pax
Availability: 2 / 3 hours per session; single session
Description: What exactly is it about the river that 'brings us life'? Do different stretches of the river have different histories and different stories? How might you – like poets past and present – engage with the river's many meanings?
Learning Outcomes: experience a changing cityscape, from a greying housing estate to the glitzy city- centre; learn to read and write on the go, based on environment and experience.