Desmond Kon

Desmond Kon Poems

Desmond Kon Biography

Desmond Francis Xavier Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé (b.1971) is the author of an epistolary novel, a quasi-memoir, two lyric essay monographs, four hybrid works, nine poetry collections, a guided creative journal, and several chapbooks. He has also edited over twenty-five books and co-produced three audio books, several pro bono for non-profit organisations including Sok Sabay Cambodia, SAGE Counselling Centre, Riding for the Disabled Association, Paya Lebar Methodist Church, and the National Volunteer & Philanthropy Centre. These titles span the genres of ethnography, journalism, creative writing, and corporate literature. Trained in book publishing at Stanford University, Desmond studied sociology and mass communication at the National University of Singapore, and later received his theology masters (world religions) from Harvard University and fine arts masters (creative writing) from the University of Notre Dame. A former journalist with 8 Days magazine, he has travelled to Australia, France, Hong Kong and Spain for his stories, which have included features on Madonna, Björk and Morgan Freeman, culminating in the authorship of the limited edition Top Ten TCS Stars for Caldecott Publishing. Desmond is the first-ever winner in both Poetry and Visionary Fiction categories at the Beverly Hills International Book Awards; to have two collections tie for Poetry at the National Indie Excellence Book Awards; to place a single title under Anthologies (Bronze) and Best Book Website (Gold) at the eLit Book Awards; to clinch two prizes under Multicultural Fiction (Silver) and Book/Author/Publisher Website (Gold) at the Independent Publisher Book Awards; to garner three accolades under Metaphysical (Bronze) , Inspirational Fiction (Silver) , and Death & Dying (Gold) categories at the Living Now Book Awards; as well as to sweep seven wins under Adult Fiction, Anthology, Poetry, and Spirituality in four territories (Northeast, West, Midwest, Southwest) at the USA Regional Excellence Book Awards. His other honours include the IBPA Benjamin Franklin Gold Award (Poetry) , Illumination Christian Book Gold Award (Digital Media) , Singapore Literature Prize (Poetry) , PEN American Center Shorts Prize, and Poetry World Cup, among other accolades. His assorted select works of poetry and prose have placed in literary competitions in Australia, Canada, England, France, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Netherlands, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Scotland, Singapore, and the US. Desmond has taught writing and publishing for over two decades, his contributions recognised with the Hiew Siew Nam Distinguished Academic Award, and four teaching excellence awards. Recipient of grants from the National Arts Council and Singapore International Foundation, he has enjoyed literary appointments at the Notre Dame Poetry Fellowship, NAC Gardens by the Bay Writing Residency, and NTU-NAC Creative Writing Residency. He has also held juror engagements for various literary competitions and projects organised by The British Council, Marshall Cavendish, Ministry of Education, National Arts Council, National Library Board, Poetry Festival Singapore, Sing Lit Station, and Word Forward. Chosen as a featured Singaporean in the commemorative tome, Living The Singapore Story: Celebrating Our 50 Years, Desmond later became the lyricist for the commissioned choral work to mark the Singapore Youth Festival's 50th Anniversary. He has also invented several poetic forms, namely the asingbol, the anima methodi, and the found//fount sonnet. A distinctly Singaporean variation of the classic form, the found//fount sonnet became the poetic form-of-choice to frame Light to Night Festival 2020, as well as issued its own commemorative anthology to mark the Singapore Bicentennial.)

The Best Poem Of Desmond Kon

Ars Poetica: At Every Turn Today

I am not Proust and his literary machine.

Am I partial as objects, as impulses that make me burst open Stevens?
Am I eros that resonates like an oboe?

The oboe is getting clinical yet pedestrian; it is listening for sounds in my chest
that point to lovers and quiet hope, and forever forgiveness.

Do you hear its waiting like an ear to the wall, like notes slipped into cracks?
How we stonewall the cracks, the poems we first loved to hear.

Can they not see the sadness of forgetfulness?

If not, haven’t their hearts ever braced themselves for loss?

We were never made to be machines, forcing movement into limbs to work
out signs like a formula. We are cells and vessels but we don’t have to follow them.

Will you follow me?
Will you follow me into eternal wonder of no beginnings, and thus no endings?

That will help me survive; it will help me live.

It will help me write poetry as if tomorrow I forgot I ever wrote.

That is how I want to remember this, this precious machination of moments
that gears itself for no cabal. That is my secret.

My secrecy was to write without condition, without limits,
as if a cipher could free itself into fields and how no one would mind.

If only my inhibitions allowed such inhibition,
I say to Deleuze, as his fingers spider my spine.





Author’s Note:

An earlier version of this poem appeared in University of Houston’s Gulf Coast, opening with an epigraph from Horace’s Ars Poetica: “He, his head in the clouds, belches out his poems and loses his way.” Its companion poem was later published in Portland Review, featuring citations from Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux’s L’Art Poétique and Wallace Stevens’ Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction. This poem ends with this line from Geoffrey of Vinsauf’s Poetria Nova: “Note the signs that accompany a given circumstance. Present the facts, but do not represent them as such; rather, reveal only signs of the facts: show fear by pallor, sensuality by adornment, and shame by a sudden blush; show the thing itself by its definite signs, what is prior by what is consequent upon it: this complexion, this sex, this age, that form.”

In The Archaeology of the Frivolous: Reading Condillac, translated by John P. Leavey, Jr. (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press,1973) , Derrida offers his reading of Condillac’s 1746 Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge, questioning under what conditions frivolity remains possible, saying: “Frivolity consists in being satisfied with tokens. It originates with the sign, or rather with the signifier which, no longer signifying, is no longer a signifier. The empty, void, friable, useless signifier. ‘…Useless is said of things which serve no purpose, are of no use. If they appear to have some utility but are fundamentally useless, they are called vain. If their utility bears only on objects of little consideration or worth, they are frivolous. As for futile, it adds still more to frivolous and is said chiefly of reasoning or arguments which bear on nothing.’” Derrida then locates at the origin of all knowledge the notion of desire which “produces understanding and the theoretical relation with the object”. As he sums up: “No longer is desire the relation with the object, but the object of need. No longer is desire a direction, but an end. An end without end bending need into a kind of flight. This escape sweeps away the origin, system, destiny, and time of need (an exempt [franc] word and a concept without identity) .”

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