The year-end is imminent— along with a new edition of the wildly-fun-and-successful Singapore Writers Festival (starts 2 Nov 2018)! Since I've spent the past year+ working for a tech startup that's building its own AI-powered blockchain for digital transactions, I've been asked to host a session on 10 Nov where we all get to imagine the future that's nearly upon us. How will this emerging magick/ technology transform the collective memory and behavior of humanity? Will it activate man to a higher level of existence or drag us to ever lower common denominators of consciousness? Join me on 10 Nov at 1430hrs and let's gaze into this dark crystal together. -Aaron
. #tech4humanity #blockchain #AI #embracechynge #SGLit #SGPoetry #SWF2018
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The Trinity Theological College in Singapore is offering a new course titled "Theology, Imagination and the Arts", helmed by our friend Shirley Bong, a pastoral staff worker in the Anglican diocese. At her invitation, I (Aaron) delivered a guest lecture on "Literature, Poetry and the Imagination" during week 4 of the course, attended by some 20 students.
"In the beginning was the Word," as it goes in the gospel according to John. The Creator chose to reveal Himself to the world for posterity through the written word and the incarnation of it in Jesus Christ. In my lecture, I spoke about literature and the Bible as cultural artefacts that have defined and shaped civilization more than we can ever know. I also mentioned meta-narratives and the Grand Narrative, and looked into some important ideas in the writings of Bunyan, CS Lewis, Tolkien, Eliot and Eugene Peterson. I went on to speak of poets as the "high priests of language" (Peterson) and poetry as a "rehumanizing art", and shared anecdotes from my experience as a vocational writer, ethics lawyer and pastor. Namiko presented two Hawaiian dances in praise of God. * * * There is an interrelationship between seeing beauty and saying it beautifully — and this effort has an impact on our lives. - John Piper Singapore poet Theophilus Kwek was part of the birthday celebrations and subsequently wrote a lovely warm-hearted article about it.
Tanga Tangan
He wāhine, he whenua, ka ngaro te tangata. (Without women and without land, humanity is lost.) – Maori proverb 1. It is almost evening. Wind-woven birds call over the fields, the sky turns a gentle grey-- Mother’s voice a low melody, her footfall on the chalky steps speaks of the fleeting day… 2. Sad and barefaced in the moonlight you stand like the flame-haired tree seen through our window. Sister, the same hand that last clutched your hand gave me this letter to place under your pillow. 3. Woman-Wife-Warrior: stark and unknowing, my hands still work without rest. All winter long each fugitive day sees my belly growing. Here I am planted, here I become strong. 4. Your tiny hand opens, receives the bright world of an unknowable future. The earth formed you my Daughter, and heaven calls you. Our tears unfold life-breath, blood-pulse, soul-cry, all things made new. This pantun (a traditional Malay poetic form, originally oral) is respectfully dedicated to the women artists of the Mata Aho Collective, Aotearoa. It is a meditation on the installation art work Kaokao #1. The title of the pantun is a portmanteau of the Maori word tangata and the Malay word tangan, meaning “hand”. "A pair of songs I composed in 2017 with lyricist Aaron Lee - “Song of the Fisherfolk” & “One by One” - will be performed by “SPEDacular Voices”, the combined choir of Special Education (SPED) schools, at the opening of the 2018 MOE SPED Conference - Nov 2nd at Singapore Expo. The performance involves 140 students and 20 teachers from 12 SPED schools. Special thanks to music master teacher Suriati Suradi for so magnificently bringing the songs to life for the teachers, and to SPEDacular Voices conductor Irene Jansen for bringing out the best from the students in every sense. Thanks as well to NAC & Liu Yonglun for matchmaking this special partnership. Without doubt, this is one of my most precious & important musical collaborations - because it manifests how music connects people despite differences, and shows how we are all the same, and therefore not quite so alone in the universe." - Facebook post and photos by Kelly Tang, 27 August 2018 (public post setting)
WTV Ch 44 shot a 5-minute video featurette on the Perth Poetry Festival!
The road
says to perspective, wait. "I chose these pithy lines from Reginald Shepherd’s poem “Syntax” to preface Five Right Angles, my second book of poetry released in 2007. At that time, I had been a serious poetry practitioner for twenty years, and an avid reader of poetry for longer. Its publication marked the first decade of my new life in Singapore as a naturalised citizen. Shortly afterwards, I began to term myself a “pilgrim poet”, with both spiritual and wayfaring connotations. Truth be told, I was a pilgrim from a very young age. As an ethnic minority Malaysian with a less-than-privileged socioeconomic background, it was providential to receive an education in Singapore and put roots down in this island nation. I have indelible memories of taking the school bus across the Woodlands Causeway daily, canvas bag on my back and passport tucked into the front pocket of my crumpled white shirt. Even as a nine- year- old, I lived between two worlds, and I knew it. … Sometimes I cannot be sure whether I am living from the inside out, or from the outside in. Does circumstance or moral agency direct the holy disarray of life? For me, poem-making at its best is about slowing down and paying close attention to seemingly trivial details: the things we might easily miss on the roads, lanes and other byways we take. It is a way of being present while seeking to move beyond mere appearance to some sort of truthful understanding of the world and the hereafter." (Extracted from "A Poet's Journey into Home and Belonging" by Aaron Lee, published in The Birthday Book 2018, eds. Cheryl Chung and Aaron Maniam) MEET OUR #PPF2018 FEATURE POET...Aaron Lee
What led you to writing poetry? I have been an avid reader since my childhood, and not long after being introduced to literature in class as an early teen, I decided to try to write my own poems. Unusually for that time, my school organised a poetry writing competition and I won the top prize when I was 16. This, and the encouragement of some teachers, made me take poetry writing seriously. What can you tell us about the poetry you write? My writing stems from themes that I feel strongly about. It's deeply personal, though not confessional. It's almost lyric poetry in that regard. I also care a lot about the aural and musical qualities of the line. That might seem strange, given that I'm not into spoken word poetry. Why do you write what you write? I write as a way to stop the world turning for a moment, to process life as it happens, to examine its trajectory. What has been your proudest accomplishment(s) to date in regards to poetry and why? Last year, the ArtScience Museum in Singapore asked to put up some lines from my poem "I Sing the Galactic" in big fonts on a wall of the museum. I'm quite a science (astronomy and natural sciences) geek, and it's a real thrill to me to have some thoughts next to quotes from famous scientists and philosophers. When you next get to Singapore, please go visit-- it's a great Museum! What or who are guaranteed sources of inspiration for you when writing poetry? My wife the national artist Namiko Chan Takahashi, has been my primary muse for nearly 20 years. She even likes me to recite my poems to her in the bedroom. I reckon it helps her sleep! If you could have a famous poet, living or dead, write you a poem, who would you choose and why? Seamus Heaney. I so admire his imagination and skill. Plus I wrote him a poem in the 1990s and he died before returning the favour. What or who are the most exciting things about poetry at the moment? The growing diversity of non-native voices in the English speaking world, is simply wonderful. What do you hope to achieve with your poetry and writing? I want people to be delighted and illuminated by a perfectly-wrought phrase or line. I want people to look under the veneer of things, to consider them deeply and from other viewpoints than their own. And I hope to see empathy and compassion take root in society; in fact this is the mission of LANIAKEA, the art collective that Namiko and I set up in 2014 <www.laniakea.la>. Aaron will be here very soon! His books, pictured below, are available now from Ethos Books. See the whole post at the Perth Poetry Festival Facebook page. Thought shapes art, and art shapes life.
- Francis Schaeffer The newly refurbished Pavilion of the Nations at the historic Bible House in Singapore was where the Bible Societies of eighteen Asian countries gathered this month at the International Bible Engagement Conference 2018. Where the work of the Bible Society had traditionally focused on translation, publishing and distribution, it was now considered timely to expand its remit to include literacy, engagement and advocacy. As part of the Arts Collective (an all-volunteer group of artists under the auspices of the Singapore Bible Society), Aaron was invited to share with the General Secretaries and representatives of the Bible Societies about the arts as a new (old) way of deepening engagement of Scripture. How wonderful it would be if Christians move beyond reading the Bible for information to immerse ourselves in it, in order to encounter the living God of His-tory. Seeing with "the eye of the heart", those that are called and gifted should make art that exegetes the human condition and thereby "till the soil of culture" in a post-Christian world. Fellow members of the Arts Collective Seah Tziyan (arts consultant) and Tay Swee Lin (curator) shared about recent initiatives such as the "Colours of the Bible" annual art competition, DECLARE - the annual 72-hour public reading of the entire Bible, as well the GoForth Missions Conference 2018 that featured a creative arts track for the first time. The session ended with a Q&A and an invitation to Bible Societies to collaborate with artists of faith in their own countries in this endeavour. AMDG Poetry Festival Singapore 2018 hosted about 80 poets in 25 events in one weekend, with over 1000 participants. Aaron had the pleasure to read his spiritual poetry at the special event "In Spirit and in Truth" together with Keki Daruwalla, Nordita Taib, Edwin Thumboo, Lin Rongchan, Grace Chia Krakovic, Chitra Ramesh and Wai Kit Ow Yeong.
One of Aaron's poems "I Sing the Galactic" (from Coastlands, Ethos Books 2014), had the theme of wayfinding as an analogy of the faith pilgrimage. For thousands of years, Polynesians traversed thousands of miles of the open Pacific Ocean with wayfinding techniques and knowledge passed by oral tradition from master to apprentice, often in the form of song. Sometimes, reed constructions of night-sky features were used as navigational charts. Aaron accompanied his poem presentation with photographs of such a chart, as well as of the canoe Hokule'a, built forty years ago by a group of Native Hawaiians and anthropologists to revive the ancient art of wayfinding. |
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Aloha Calling - 'Ohana SG Laniakea Culture Collective Aaron Lee Namiko Chan Takahashi 10 Thousand Profiles |