By Crispin Rodrigues

To the Tune
Jee Leong Koh
Bench Press (2026) / 114 pages / SGD 25

Living in a world in which we always seem a whisper away from disaster, one might read Jee Leong Koh's To the Tune as apocalyptic – it captures the fears of an inherently doomed world, uncaring and unchanging, but underneath it, it holds great hope through its form.

At first glance, Koh's work is political in its intentions. It does not shy away from addressing injustice both in Singapore and the United States, both contexts in which Koh has a strong connection to. The collection questions systemic injustices of the day, from the recent news about several ministers owning good class bungalows, to the saga involving Lee Kuan Yew's children, to the conservative upheavals in the US under the Donald Trump regime. These poems are unflinching in their criticism of what he calls "the swamp / of self-interest" (pg. 27). Take a couple of stanzas from the poem "To the Tune of 'Home' by Dick Lee" in which he criticises the ownership of good class bungalows:

I am a Good Class Bungalow
And not a No Class Flat.
I'm rich in show and hung with dough,
I need no caveat.

I am a Good Class Bungalow.
Don't say, I No Class Flat.
Just one slip of the tongue, you know,
POFMA'ed you will get.

Here, Koh does not shy away from his political concerns. There is no hiding behind fancy metaphor or any modicum of guessing. Here, his poetics are blatant and cutting – he directly refers to two recent political issues here: one on the ownership of Good Class Bungalows by ministers and the use of POFMA as a political silencing tool. Koh doesn't just question, he accuses, sharply, without withholding.

But I will argue that there is more subtlety at play here. While direct in its subject, he offers complexity through simplicity, which is the mark of Koh's skill. Take the use of pronouns here – the distinction between the almighty, haughty "I" and the accusatory "you". The positionality of the "I" as being voice of the poem then situates the "you", the accuser of those who question who owns these Good Class Bungalows, as victim of a gamed system, where those in positions of power can still squeeze others through mechanisms of oppression like "POFMA". This ties nicely to the poem's music references. The poem reads like a 'fairy tale' and has a nursery rhyme-like quality, which traditionally had political messages built into them. It also references 'Home' by Dick Lee, which has become the go-to National Day song that Singaporeans sing to remind them that Singapore is "home, truly". This poem then questions what home is, and who controls what "truly" means. What is the truth to home ownership, and what aspects of our home are shrouded in the mystery to the point that we cannot recognise it truly. Though simple, Koh is doing something way more masterful that simple rhyme; he lulls us with the primary purpose of poetry – to ask larger questions through defamiliarising what seems familiar to us.

This questioning of the nature of poetry is perhaps foregrounded the most in the invocation of Du Fu, one of the greatest Chinese poets of all time, who lived through the Tang dynasty, one of China's most historically prosperous and tumultuous times. As an imperial official, Du Fu would bear witness to wars and was displaced due to the An Lushan rebellion, which was captured in his poetry. Koh, who was formerly part of the civil service himself, finds that kinship in their positions – displaced individuals trying to use poetry as a vehicle in a world driven by the political manoeuvrings of larger forces, only to realise that they can only bear witness. This can be seen in the letter-poem that Koh writes to Du Fu about Md Sharif (pg. 4), a Bangladeshi migrant poet who was deported from Singapore:

we hear Tagore and country
warm as a mother's lap and cold like her stars

as if we have never left
still waiting to grow up to be worthy of her

Golden Bengal
Kind Singapore

still waiting for more
than more

Most sincerely
Jee

Koh invokes not just one poet, but four (Sharif, Du Fu, Tagore and himself), as a kind of interface of what poetry can and cannot do. Poetry can create communion in its invocation of the past, but ultimately, poetry is the act of "waiting for more / than more". It signals political desire and direction but struggles in actual action, especially in the face of political actors who can wield more authority.

Still, Koh believes in the transgressive resonance of poetry and how it lingers more than any political actor. Politicians and dynasties come and go, but poetry remains. Just as how Du Fu's words get picked up by Koh centuries later, Koh believes that his words will linger and transgress historical and geographical limits. For him, the strength of poetry lies in its ability to connect, as seen his letter-poem to Du Fu in the middle of the collection (pg. 44–45):

compared to
the value of having one's poem

quoted on Instagram
by a queer acolyte from New Zealand

The opinion takes aim at our rights
the poem our hearts

The newspaper reaches ten thousand
the poem one

Which is more valuable to pursue
with three arrows left in my quiver

Just as how Du Fu has reached him, so does Koh highlight how his poetry has transcended to "a queer acolyte from New Zealand". Poetry will find its audience and message across time and space, especially in times of oppression, where art has seemingly taken a backseat to policial agendas.

One could easily dismiss To the Tune as simply a political collection. After all, it wears its heart on its sleeve. It is unabashed in the issues it addresses, and pulls no punches in how it responds to the times. But it is also sentimental, longing for connection, and optimistic in the wake of apocalyptic times, as the collection ends in a moving piece centred on the "we":

This morning I remember my friend Orlando
and his gift

for seeing others
when it least matters

as you do
you treasure

If the poet's role, as Percy Shelley quotes in 'The Defence of Poetry' is to be "the unacknowledged legislator of the world", then the Koh acknowledges this role of poetry as the bridge, not just between issues, but between people, and this is what matters more than sighing about the times.

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