[thelitterbugs.net]ISSUE#03GEYLANG
This December, the HCJC litwing presents a publication on the theme of 'Geylang'. There is really intense erotic writing comprising a mix of sex, love, desire, physicality, grit, tradition.
Chitralekha Basu’s ‘red light at your window’ presents a piece depicting tradition as the guardian of prostitution. Nurul Jihadah Hussain, ‘city of sand’ talks about the displacement of a lost generation - she weaves legend into a piece that mourns the commercialisation of mythology of a country. Hers is a sociopolitical piece with a lyricism that makes it confrontational.
Under the seeming physicality of the pieces, is the constant countercurrent of emotional need –Clarisse Fong’s ‘the cities of the interior are not mapped’ is memory sequence illustrating the inescapable maze of the body and desire; Bernard Koh’s ‘four women standing at a pink door’ is an articulation of yearning. It's the friction between desire to discard emotional yearning and the need for it that brings they geylang pieces their intensity. Within the sexuality of the pieces is the dangerous undertow of politics. embedded in some pieces, the reversal of roles: the power of the woman, who commands that he swallows his self-respect to approach her.
The LitWing. HCJC. Informal, enthusiastic, intimate, rather self-indulgent. the LitWing meets on fridays, going on outings to Boat Quay, Geylang, Little India, doing strange writing exercises and conducting readings. It has published 3 online publications this year and is currently working on a print publication project. It hopes to establish performance poetry event YAWP (Young Adult Writers Perform) as a yearly tradition. The LitWing is a fledging society with little history but big hopes.
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Litterbug: Geylang Issue
Posted - 16 Dec 2004 : 14:04:55
