second (concluding) weekend of the singapore writers’ festival & as First Literary Fellow of the Arts House Fellowship^TM I was obliged (pleasantly!) to be at many things, including quick and dirty networking breakfasts and teas, and a certain fAnCy sit-down luncheon at the Brasserie Astoria that involved my friend Ichi (who writes excellently under the name F.H. Batacan and whose new book, Accidents Happen, is my happy first foray into crime fiction and a nuanced look at sociopolitical inequality in the Philippines) and I sitting and talking to each other while 24 other people had lunch around us (we made our best attempts to eat as well, but with paper notes, and microphones, and books, and social awkwardness, well—). at this lunch, we read excerpts of our work and interviewed each other about how crime fiction speaks to queer feminist witchy poetry. mostly, we are pissed-off women interested in the bloated bodies and various uglinesses. but as Ichi says, the two countries could not be more different. she would know–she’s resided in both for significant years.

after the lunch, a children’s writer, also a woman, with her less-than-enthusiastic husband in tow, said to me, ‘I just have one question for you—are you married?’
‘I’m engaged.’
‘well, I was going to ask, because you are so rebellious, and n0w that you are getting married, isn’t that a kind of settling down?’

I told her, definitely, me marrying anyone else, would be some form of self-diminishment, being made to sit tight and appear cognizant of some form of propriety. perhaps it would be naive to think that hitching your wagon to someone else’s carriage might leave you unchanged and/or untamed. I don’t harbour any delusions that any kind of long-term relationship alters the landscape of who you are. the words you water yourself with turn the soil more fallow or fertile. I told her, being given back to myself is a gift. I am now bigger than I was. she looked a bit confused. husband husbandry is always a conundrum for me. I hear a lot about living with men and I do not like it. but the delight is in the details of every conversation that sharpens your self—from moral turpitude to complex questioning. in being acknowledged as ‘nonsense with great sincerity’. it was all a bit too context-dependent for her, I fear. I didn’t want to over-explain but I sensed that she was mistaking me for a straight person. I’m a good person, I don’t deserve that. maybe I’m spoilt and less desperate for human connection now that I am bathing in the waters of abundance. that’s the real fucking sacred union that straddles sacrilege and the sublime. in any case. wedding or no. I know I’ll never be pressured into having a fucking catholic church wedding because I can, because I’m marrying a cishet man, because respectability might still mean something to my mother. but wouldn’t it be so funny? to allow my muslim fiancé to wed me under the arch of a cathedral witnessed by baptismal fonts that they don’t use any more? under the damn cross? in catechism they call the mark of a catholic indelible and every time I go to church I imagine myself indelibly marked, errant daughter, coming back twice a year to roll her eyes and eat their magic bread. it’s intimate. it’s charming in its skewed way. in the whole pew, it’s only my fiancé who pays attention to the sermon.

my friend Andrew’s mother said my energy has changed—she exclaimed that my aura is much less witchy than before. Andrew appended this observation with ‘which means less tormented, I am assuming’. it’s a gentle crisis of identity that’s been happening without the constancy of desperation about me. and now that we can afford gentleness with ourselves, what happens to the bitch anger? what happens to the discontent woman?

finding myself in happy discontent on the all-women’s panel, Poetry is Not A Luxury, ft. Kim Yi-deum (translated by Chris Kim) and Pooja Nansi, moderated by Christine Chia, was a timely reminder that, as Pooja put it, ‘all [her] (and my) writing comes from irritation’. I don’t know how to write without protesting. someone asked, “if you don’t write from the irritated and angry, what are some things you all write about that you actually enjoy?” truth be told, I’m not certain that I can write without pleasure—I’m a total dripping slut for it, but perhaps not in the way of softness. I like tenderness that is underlaid with tension (who doesn’t?). while sharing a cigarette with her on the wetly gleaming morning before our panel, Yi-deum said, of someone’s poetry, that it was very gentle and we both looked at each other like we didn’t know what to do with gentleness. I love evil hags conspiring to tear back the wallpaper and reveal the mould that’s rotted the wood right through. truth-telling is sacred and dirty work, and it is some kind of affirming to hear someone acknowledge that their own rage that might incite a similar response in an indignant audience.

going back to the lunch, someone else asked the question, ‘being like this, and not thinking like ordinary people (I may be paraphrasing a little), is it hard for you to be in singapore?’

I was a little confused by the question—she wasn’t asking about the reception to my work, or any kind of animosity or backlash; she was asking if it was hard for me to be. be like this. and I would gaily say no, I’m happy in my anger, but that wouldn’t be acknowledging the gift that privilege affords me: to be able to mute, block, and buffer dissenting opinions with my chosen social circle, with middle-class privilege, with my blithe sociopathy. I would say I hate being a woman, but I know I am not brown or fat or disabled or non-gender-conforming in a way that would make it so much worse. I could say I hate being a woman in this country, and queer, god knows my options for housing and children are ever-limited, but I think it’s quite clear that I don’t need to be asked that question. I’m literate (somewhat) and easily pass as non-threatening and unobtrusive. I don’t have a small, three-degrees-of-separation community that will gossip about me if I am to flash my cleavage through life. sure, my mother will tell me to Take It Down and say that my instagram is “”Very Colourful””, but it goes no further than that. I don’t know what it’s like to be beholden to an extended family’s opinions, extending into in-group.

more than that, my thoughts always go to perennial shyness whenever I am called (holy vocation) to be with strangers in a social context. however many networking sessions occur, I don’t know that I will ever get used to the initial adrenaline rush, the expectation of awkwardness, the half-baked attempts at kindling conversation, (again!!) balancing food and speaking. a beverage glass is my best friend and nothing else. I cannot eat at parties. it’s like I cannot relax enough to ingest—two ends of the eternal digestively disordered shitposting coin. for many months I ached so long to be invited to a speed-dating event (not for lack of a partner, you understand. for love of the game) because I thought it would be so fun to talk to strangers for an allotted amount of time and then switch. well, on friday, I was at a meet-the-publishers and agents session where we did just that, and it turns out without knowing what the agenda is or the goal there, I don’t really know what to do with myself. or I do—I managed to speak to five or six new people, two of whom were structured and planned for, but with the rest, I kind of wandered about until I was forced to introduce myself by way of being pulled by gravity too far into their orbit, or until I was stopped by auxillary people who already knew my name. that’s cheating, I think. I always fantasised about how lovely, how full of nonsense you could be at a speed dating event, just to feel out compatibilities and move on, but I think it was harder for me because you’re probably not allowed to flirt with the agents. I didn’t try very hard to flirt with them.

anyway I have renewed empathy for people who go to speed dating events because it’s hard to have fun if you don’t really know what someone else’s goals are. which is why I opened several times with ‘what are you looking for?’ at the networking event straight off the bat. I don’t know, okay?! subtlety is not my strong suit and no one believes me when I say, I’m shy, I’m actually very shy, I cannot look you in the eye if I haven’t mentally prepared for it. I don’t have many tools in the arsenal because flirting is not about a memorised line, it’s not about some kind of canned putting-of-moves-over-on someone, it’s only about rapt attention and unexpected connection. I don’t have any tools in the arsenal which is why it’s doubly funny that I’m interested in dating and desire as much as I am. I’ve been very ‘get over yourself, you’re an adult’ about shyness (even, or especially, to myself) but I always say that I need an ‘in’. I need an excuse to come over and say a bunch of 5-6 sentences that may or may not endear me to you or leave you, as someone I once met for the first time said to me, thinking you “can’t decide if [I] am 16 or 60”.

so, I am creating ‘in’s for other people. because I vicariously love to date, and of course, out of the goodness of my pure-virtued soul, I’ve started attempting to run a matchmaking service out of my metaphorical virtual backyard. people on twitter seem to like it. I write less than 140 characters about your most sellable attributes and send it out into the ether. we have blind dates lined up. granted I’ve only done it for two people who are close to and beloved to me but I think that’s the way it should be—spontaneous with a little bit of pushiness. what’s ironic is that I think I’d have been very resistant to the idea of going on a blind date back when I was still looking. I salute anyone who can give up control like that. but it’s also because I know I have a great tendency to be destructive when bored—and, simultaneously, harbour a great aptitude for making excuses for lackluster people. you’ve got to have boundaries and spontaneity, and maybe I possessed neither. one can always aspire. in any case. good luck out there. email me if you want to be the next person to be advertised anonymously. I can’t promise you anything, least of all a good time, but I always keep this quote by my heart’s bedside table:

If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try.

For lower-stakes networking and meeting new people, come to the queer mixer ANGRY ACTIVIST HAPPY HOUR where you may not id as angry nor activist but you might find someone into the same cool-dull things that you are, and end up learning about something you weren’t into before. I will be there, I will introduce you to all my friends, let’s drink a beverage and awkwardly eat something together maybe.

Angry Activist Happy Hour
Wed 26th Nov 2025
RASA | 9 Raffles Place, Republic Plaza Tower 1
#02-01/02, Singapore 048619

and three of my smaller poems out in the coalition, containing hokkien, carbuncles, calling god a study in the insensate:

as always,
hope you find a new thing to thrill over and an old thing worth still being in the thrall of.

on sunday was the SWF closing debate and while telling us why robots were not our friends, most respected and handsome spoken word poet Shivram Gopinath (who has just put out a banger of a book, Dey) delivered this banger of a line:

“your large language model can simulate compassion with 91% linguistic accuracy? that’s cute, so can a narcissist on the first date.” I’m going to be thinking about that for weeks.

xoxo
m