UBC Slam Co-founder and poet Lucia Misch is our guest on the show today. Click below to listen!

January 27, 2010 Goh Poh Seng

This week on a special edition of Wax Poetic we celebrate the life of local dramatist, novelist and poet, Goh Poh Seng, with an interview and reading of his works by his sons, Kagan and Kajin Goh.

Goh Poh Seng was born in Malaya in 1936. He received his medical degree from University College Dublin, and practised medicine in Singapore for twenty-five years. In his time living in Singapore, Dr Goh held many honorary positions including the Chairman of the National Theatre Trust Board between 1967 and 1972. He was committed to the development of Art and cultural policies of post-independent Singapore, as well as the development of cultural institutions such as the Singapore National Symphony, the Chinese Orchestra and the Singapore Dance Company.^[1]

Goh's first novel, If We Dream Too Long won the National Book Development Council of Singapore's Fiction Award in 1976 and has been translated into Russian and Tagalog. His other books include The Immolation, Dance of Moths, Eyewitness, Lines from Batu FerringhiBird With One Wing. His most recent works are his Collections of Poems, As Though the Gods Love Us and The Girl from Ermita. His work also appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies around the world. Goh lived in Canada to which he emigrated in 1986. He died on 10 January 2010 in Vancouver. 

From Wikipedia

Photos

Left. At home in Singapore – circa 1970s

Right: With Professor Dennis Enright, poet and Professor of English at the University of Singapore - Early 1960s

Urban Planning by Kim Goldberg

from RED ZONE (2009, Pig Squash Press)

 

Urban Planning

Kim Goldberg

Train tracks scrape past the sun-hammered miners’

shacks left over from the last

century. The front side is tarted up

as the Historic Old Quarter. But the backside

holds the story. Just ask the crumbling sunflower

sentries guarding the ass-end

of the Women’s Center. Or the weather-stripped

shiplap on the Bride’s Closet next door

luffing like a beaten flag while some gunk

the color of old blood drips

from a rusty pipe. I know this stuff

because I am now at a sufficiently advanced

stage in my daily rail-walking to support

a head-up gaze at my surroundings without

tumbling into the thorns. Beyond the

bridal store the shaling Occidental

Hotel and Bar prevails like an asylum

for the criminally insane. While across the

tracks a torn quilt pocked with bodily

stains lies splayed on a weedy patch

behind the Thrift Shop – a cardboard box 

nightstand totters beside. She will

sleep here again tonight

unless chance finds her at the copshop on

the corner or perhaps in the bed

of someone she meets in the Oxy. And if he’s

not too bad, maybe they’ll get hitched

and pay a visit to the Bride’s Closet (except

that’s likely where her problems started – it’s all so

cyclotronic). He’ll probably keep

spending his nights at the Oxy, coming home

mean, talking fist-speak, till she ducks

out, goes to the Women’s Center, which

will be closed due to funding cuts, so she’ll do

some dumpster diving in the donation box

outside the Thrift Shop till she finds another quilt

and a spot to lie.

*  *  *

RED ZONE is available at People's Co-op Bookstore in Vancouver and other independent bookstores or directly from the publisher, Pig Squash Press. Email goldberg@ncf.ca for details.

Jan. 13th 2010- Kim Goldberg

Kim Goldberg is an award-winning poet, journalist and author. She has spent the last three years wandering Nanaimo's back alleys, graffiti galleries, underpasses and homeless camps to create her latest book, RED ZONE – a photo-poetic map of Nanaimo's homeless population. Her previous collection, Ride Backwards on Dragon was a finalist for Canada’s 

Lampert Memorial Award for poetry.

More information about Kim's latest book, RED ZONE, can be found at, 

http://pigsquash.wordpress.com/

More information about Kim's previous book, Ride Backwards on Dragon, can be found at, 

http://www.leafpress.ca/Books_Trade/Goldberg_Pages/Ride%20Backwards%20on%20Dragon.htm
And here>>

January 6th Show

RC digs into his "Tickle Trunk" of spoken word to share some of his collection on today's show.