After The Fall: Dirges Among Ruins

by Eric Tinsay Valles

Shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize 2016 for English Poetry

This collection explores the creative space of poetry as a means to unravel feelings evoked by the violence of war or by everyday traumatic events. One may come to terms with uncomfortable, including unspeakable, feelings by describing them with imagery from nature and one’s immediate environment. By participating in grieving, the self can better face any lingering effects of trauma. In this creative space, dramatic speakers retell stories and give vent to contradictory feelings through silences and free play. Their accounts attest to the dappled beauty of the human condition even if the full nature, scope and effects of traumatic memories are always beyond their grasp.

Genres: Poetry

88 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

ERIC TINSAY VALLES , formerly a journalist and editor, currently teaches English Language and Literature at the National University of Singapore High School of Math and Science. He has been published in Routledge’s New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing, the Hispanic Culture Review (George Mason University), the Singapore National Arts Council-published anthology Reflecting on the Merlion, the Ethos published & Words: Poems Singapore and Beyond, Ceriph as well as in online journals Double Dialogues (University of Melbourne) and Bukker Tillibul (Swinburne University of Technology). In 2011, he won the City Loves Writing competition organized by the British Council and was admitted to a writing residency at the Vermont Studio Centre in the US.

Reviews

[Ernest · Rating 5 out of 5]

An underrated volume. Their topics range far and wide but reflect a concern with the human being, drawing on observations of museums, theology, an imaginative dialogue with popular media.

[Sunglasses_emoji · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is truly a magnificent collection... Thought provoking and moving in equal measure - I thoroughly loved it.