Koh Buck Song (b. 1963)

1. BIOGRAPHY

2. CRITICAL INTRODUCTION

3. SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

4. SELECTED POEMS

• A Brief History of Toa Payoh

• Wayang Kulit

• Moose-Hunting, Canadian Rockies

• Close Quarters, Chinatown

• The Fragrance of Lallang

• Corridor, Bukit Merah

• Merlion: Strike One

• “shoring” Singapore

SELECTED POEMS

Close Quarters, Chinatown

to modern minds
or those of a different
order of being,
it must count
as some special science
to live
at such proximity,
to keep one’s own circle
discrete, discreet,
all the while sustaining
not too much overlap
in the Venn diagrams 
of neighbourhood

to understand
that one is not
a whole number,
an integer unto oneself
but a digit
in a spectrum
of denominators 

these are equations
some do not calculate:
the geometry of community,
the arithmetic of survival
as instinct does its sums

by Koh Buck Song
from Twenty-five Years of Watercolour Painting in Singapore (1994)

SELECTED POEMS: “The Fragrance of Lallang” >