Moving House

By Theophilus Kwek

Theophilus Kwek's first UK collection is concerned with the individual and the collective stories that become history. The poems set out from formative moments in the poet's memory, to pivotal moments in the colonial past of Southeast Asia, and finally the political upheavals of the present. Hospitality, precarity, migration these are some of the themes that recur as the poet makes his own journey from Singapore to Europe and back again. Moving House moves on a big time and space map, from Icelandic tales to the Malayan Emergency, and more contemporary dramas. From the perspective of a Chinese Singaporean shaped by the collective traditions and histories described in this book, writing in Britain, the poems model a sense of openness on the space of the page.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
• Release date: Dec 21, 2020
• ISBN: 9781784109646

Theophilus Kwek

Theophilus Kwek is a writer, editor and translator based in Singapore. Two of his previous collections of poetry were shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize, while his pamphlet, The First Five Storms, won the inaugural New Poets' Prize in 2016. Other awards include the Jane Martin Poetry Prize, the Berfrois Poetry Prize, and the Stephen Spender Prize for poetry in translation. A former President of the Oxford University Poetry Society, he now serves as co-editor of Oxford Poetry and The Kindling, and has also edited several volumes of Singaporean writing. His poems, essays and translations have been published in The Guardian, Times Literary Supplement, The Irish Examiner, and the Mekong Review.

Book preview

2THEOPHILUS KWEK

Moving House

3

For those who build our houses

and those who believe in keeping them open

4

CONTENTS

TITLE PAGE

DEDICATION

WITNESS

PROGNOSIS

CHINESE WHISPERS

MY GRANDFATHER VISITS PYONGYANG

REQUIEM

THE GAMBLE

MAGDALENE

THE DANCE

DEAD MAN’S SAVINGS WON’T GO TO WIFE

BLUE

HUANG XUEYING MEETS HER MOTHER IN THE UNDERWORLD

THE PASSENGER

WESTMINSTER

OCCURRENCE

MONOLOGUES FOR NOH MASKS

24.6.16

STRANGERS DROWNING

THE WEEK IT HAPPENS

WHAT IT’S LIKE

THE FALL

H.

HO 213/926

CAMERATA

THE CRABS

THE WAY LIGHT WORKS

FIRST EASTER

LUCKY

MY LOVE,

GUNUNG

OPERATION THUNDERSTORM

WAYS OF WALKING

MARGINALIA

SOPHIA

THE DIFFERENCE

TRANSFORMATIONS

GRAVITY

EVA

LOCH NA FUAICHE

NOTES ON A LANDSCAPE

WHAT FOLLOWS

ROAD CUTTING AT GLANMIRE

PULSE

THE QUESTIONING

LOVE POEM

FIFTY-ONE

NOCTURNAL

FINAL CUT

MOVING HOUSE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

COPYRIGHT

5

WITNESS

It was mid-morning. The body flipped,

came to rest face-down on tarmac.

Unaware, the rider went some distance

then, noticing something was amiss,

stopped, dismounted, ran back to where

a gathering clutch of men knelt and stood.

She was already gone. And so were we,

drawn on by the bus’s trajectory

toward our stops, unseeing, unseen

except in one last receding frame.

Steep death. The mind trips at the shock,

chafes at conversation, replays the scene

till the point at which all fall unplanned –

what then? Imagining gains no ground,

is caught in a morning’s too usual arc.

Hard pavement receives the pedestrian

in step as in flight, accounts to no-one

for what forces in our different lives

plot with foreign accuracy

lines of habit and desire, and bear us

away from accidents. Far behind now,

this leaving leaves its quiet mark. Parents,

asked by children about their days,

find fewer answers, tell only truths

and, passing afterwards, see in the place

of yesterday’s routine a rupture

in our time, where past and present

futures meet, stop short. A living fault.

6

PROGNOSIS

The knowledge settles at the bottom of your glass.

What’s left clarifies, divides the light. Clean white,

which crosses the air unscathed, and this – water’s

half-true cataract. In its arc the table’s dry laminate

turns gold-dappled, warm, even tiles rise up to dance.

Like a prism it drowns the ward in colour, albeit

of one tan shade. How is it that outside bears no trace?

A vaulted sky hovers as if on steel beams to clothe

a station hall. Cars idle at the roundabout, nurses

stride with great purpose from block to block

yet nothing resembles this: how here the day transforms

and slows, its swollen alchemy. Bedside, your clock

mocks us both, pilfering with gloved hands from

every hour, while time, stealing through your un-

finished cup, lays itself down, the sun’s bright psalm.

Before this dull image in the blood’s darkroom,

you too pursued your tricks of the lens, drove so often

from one station to another, in some unknown realm

with your camera to mark the breaking of night or dawn.

I could not see then, why a moment’s flux

should arrest your gaze, or why with determination 7

you’d try and snare each one for eternity. Now I look

on as the rays unspool across your desk and feet, listen

for coughs, how your engine lingers with lifted clutch,

and gather up the spent threads from where I stand.

It falls on my fingers too, this ravelling light.

I wish I could glean it with more than hands.

8

CHINESE WHISPERS

‘It always turns out that much is salvageable.’

— John Ashbery (1927–2017)

Have you heard         how we light up the houses

so they last forever, pyres of cardboard and joss

with laughter in the windows, late guests

dressed in their best clothes for a midnight ball