Yeow Kai Chai

Yeow Kai Chai Poems

Yeow Kai Chai Biography

Yeow Kai Chai is a poet, former Straits Times journalist, and the current director of the Singapore Writers Festival. With writings influnced by music videos and other forms of artistic impressions, he is a MA graduate in English Literature from the National University of Singapore, and has published two poetry collections: Secret Manta (2001) and Pretend I'm Not Here (2006). He is also an editor of the Quarterly Literary Review Singapore. Appointed by the National Arts Council in 2015, he presided over a sold-out debut Singapore Writers Festival, reaching an audience of more than 19,700 with a broadened lineup featuring music, dance, drama and art events.)

The Best Poem Of Yeow Kai Chai

quarterly report no. 7: epiphytes and vetiver control

Before the fourth sunrise, the road shoulder
has already shrugged off its riffraff,

grass grower over night without tea or sympathy.
Side alley slippers from the lights,

eye shadows all and sundry.
Levees veer behind the suns,

tugboat between nonplussed and shy panty
hose. You leave. The remains as it was,

aqueducts bursting at seams
away from the centre of the spinning plate.

A crab claws back. Fig leaf. Prawn
crackering… Something comes unstuck,

sums added up. Eventually everything
swallows even eventually up. Puff.

Evening spat out like newt.
There's nothing to it. Lovers pistol-whipped

into acquiesce, then resume normal
appliance before dinner function at nine.

Come night, certain absentees glower,
tips shudderer as vitreous floaters.

Yeow Kai Chai Comments