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Elsewhere, the Cosmos Cracks
Elsewhere, the Cosmos Cracks is a poetry collection that asks, amidst the climate crisis, how one continues to find wonder in the everyday.
Beginning from the confines of a HDB estate, the poems present a way of walking through Singapore’s landscape, to find moments of reconnection across time. In pieces that reconsider public housing as a garden, revisit the well-worn story of a national flower, and return to familiar rituals and language as inherited wisdom, the collection posits that some of our answers might just be awaiting us in plain sight—so long as we learn how to look.
Beginning from the confines of a HDB estate, the poems present a way of walking through Singapore’s landscape, to find moments of reconnection across time. In pieces that reconsider public housing as a garden, revisit the well-worn story of a national flower, and return to familiar rituals and language as inherited wisdom, the collection posits that some of our answers might just be awaiting us in plain sight—so long as we learn how to look.
- GenresPoetry
122 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 31, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 7, 2026
What a beautiful collection of poems! I am in awe of Chrystal’s deep attunement to the nonhuman and human world around her, and of how her poems invite readers to walk through Singapore with renewed attention and wonder.
September 7, 2025
rlly enjoyed reading this collection of poems that doesn’t just speak - it listens. 🥹 chrystal ho’s debut is both tender & precise, offering a quiet but powerful reminder of the beauty that persists even amidst environmental collapse and urban noise. rooted in the landscape of singapore, these poems invite us to pause, observe & remember how to wonder. 💭☁️
⭐️⭐️⭐️/5. what lingers with me most is the way nature quietly threads through this collection ugh i love it so much 🌼🌳🌿🍃🌸🌷🌻 in an age of climate crisis, these poems don’t preach despair. instead, they ask us to look again, to listen differently & to find the sacred in the everyday.
reading this felt like walking slowly through a familiar neighbourhood and noticing, for the first time, how vines creep across concrete or how the light shifts at a certain hour. its a book that draws your gaze downward and inward - toward small things, quiet things & reminds you that they matter.
i also love how local it gets, gently nudging us to walk through singapore not just with our eyes but with our hearts wide open. this book rlly came to me at the right time. it reminded me that even amidst ruin, the world still offers itself - in petals, stories and sky - waiting, always, to be seen. 💚🌱
// thank you so much @afterimage.press for sending this advanced reading copy in exchange for an honest review 🙆♀️ book launch is happening on 5 sept – check out their IG for more updates/details !!!☺️
⭐️⭐️⭐️/5. what lingers with me most is the way nature quietly threads through this collection ugh i love it so much 🌼🌳🌿🍃🌸🌷🌻 in an age of climate crisis, these poems don’t preach despair. instead, they ask us to look again, to listen differently & to find the sacred in the everyday.
reading this felt like walking slowly through a familiar neighbourhood and noticing, for the first time, how vines creep across concrete or how the light shifts at a certain hour. its a book that draws your gaze downward and inward - toward small things, quiet things & reminds you that they matter.
i also love how local it gets, gently nudging us to walk through singapore not just with our eyes but with our hearts wide open. this book rlly came to me at the right time. it reminded me that even amidst ruin, the world still offers itself - in petals, stories and sky - waiting, always, to be seen. 💚🌱
// thank you so much @afterimage.press for sending this advanced reading copy in exchange for an honest review 🙆♀️ book launch is happening on 5 sept – check out their IG for more updates/details !!!☺️
February 16, 2026
Devastating, delicate and full of holy rage.
Chrystal writes poems about the environment with a quality I typically associate with landscape photographs shot on medium format astounding and rich with details, inviting you to (re)discover, be in awe by the beauty of nature, then meander to the point of meditation...except every time you want to tend these meditations, you are constantly interrupted, cut short by the nation-state's "pruning saw that cuts the wayward limbs". These meditations also sometimes become channeling. The reader becomes haunted again and again by the spectre of Vanda Miss Joaquim.
By the time you are done with this collection, you will realise, you are not only on fire, you ARE the forest fire.
Chrystal writes poems about the environment with a quality I typically associate with landscape photographs shot on medium format astounding and rich with details, inviting you to (re)discover, be in awe by the beauty of nature, then meander to the point of meditation...except every time you want to tend these meditations, you are constantly interrupted, cut short by the nation-state's "pruning saw that cuts the wayward limbs". These meditations also sometimes become channeling. The reader becomes haunted again and again by the spectre of Vanda Miss Joaquim.
By the time you are done with this collection, you will realise, you are not only on fire, you ARE the forest fire.
April 22, 2026
Absolutely scintillating. Read cover to cover in a single sitting, and then reread it to experience it again.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews