Writers from China's diaspora
Getting published overseas and persuading your government to foot part of the bill is no small achievement. So, Eddie Tay's second volume of poetry must have something going for it.
For the first time, Singapore's National Arts Council awarded a grant to a publisher based outside the country: Hong Kong's Sixth Finger Press published Tay's A Lover's Soliloquy in March.
The collection continues the interest in reworking and interpreting Tang dynasty literature that Tay showed in his first collection, Remnants. It also contains his musings on love and the loneliness that he feels is peculiar to city dwellers, particularly people in modern cities such as Singapore and Hong Kong.
Born and bred in Singapore, Tay, 30, was educated at a bilingual English-Chinese school. After years spent trying to escape from Chinese literature, he later discovered the beauty of Tang dynasty poets such as Li Shangyin, Li Po, Li Ho and Tu Fu.
'I felt all this Chinese culture was being stuffed down my throat,' Tay says of his schooldays. 'I felt guilt and I think this was a way of me trying to undo that resistance.'
His childhood fondness for the likes of Charles Dickens meant he knew almost nothing about Chinese literature, so Tay began reading poetry from the Tang dynasty - the era said to have produced China's greatest writers. Tang poems are brief, with five or seven words per line. Through the clever placing of characters, poets conveyed great meaning in a few words.