Moving House

by Theophilus Kwek

Theophilus Kwek’s first UK collection is concerned with the individual and the collective stories that become history. The poems set out from formative moments in the poet’s memory, to pivotal moments in the colonial past of Southeast Asia, and finally the political upheavals of the present. Hospitality, precarity, migration – these are some of the themes that recur as the poet makes his own journey from Singapore to Europe and back again.

Moving House moves on a big time and space map, from Icelandic tales to the Malayan Emergency, and more contemporary dramas. From the perspective of a Chinese Singaporean shaped by the collective traditions and histories described in this book, writing in Britain, the poems model a sense of openness on the space of the page.

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Paperback

Published June 26, 2020

About the author

Theophilus Kwek has published three poetry collections, Giving Ground (2016), They Speak Only Our Mother Tongue (2011) and Circle Line (2013), which was shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize. He is a winner of the Jane Martin Prize and the Martin Starkie Prize, and his poems have appeared in The London Magazine, The Interpreter’s House, the Quarterly Literary Review of Singapore, and various anthologies. He studies History and Politics at Merton College, Oxford, and is currently President of the Oxford University Poetry Society, as well as Content Advisor to the Oxford Culture Review.

Reviews

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first collection of the Chinese Singaporean poet’s work to be published in the UK. Infused with Asian history, his elegant verse ranges from elegiac to romantic in tone. Many of the poems are inspired by historical figures and real headlines. There are tributes to soldiers killed in peacetime training and accounts of high-profile car accidents; “The Passenger” is about the ghosts left behind after a tsunami. But there are also poems about the language and experience of love. I also enjoyed the touches of art and legend: “Monologues for Noh Masks” is about the Pitt-Rivers Museum collection, while “Notes on a Landscape” is about Iceland’s geology and folk tales. In most places alliteration and enjambment produce the sonic effects, but there are also a handful of rhymes and half-rhymes, some internal.

My individual favorite poems included “Prognosis,” “Sophia” (made up of two letters Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles writes home to his wife while surveying in Singapore), and “Operation Thunderstorm.” As an expat and something of a nomad, I especially loved the title poem, which comes last and explains the cover image: “every house has a skeleton – / while the body learns it must carry less / from place to place, a kind of tidiness / that builds, hardens. Some call it fear, // of change, or losing what we cannot keep. / Others, experience.” Recommended to fans of Mary Jean Chan, Nausheen Eusuf, Kei Miller and Ocean Vuong.

[Kendrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Theophilius Kwek's trajectory amongst his Singaporean contemporaries is impressive. He published his first collection They Speak Only Our Mother Tongue way back in 2011, became a poetry editor at Oxford Poetry while studying at Oxford University, and then published Moving House with Carcanet in 2020. He is the second Singaporean to publish with the press, after Jee Leong Koh's Steep Tea (2015). 'Moving House' gathers a range of historical events and recasts them in poetry, while also experimenting with poetic forms such as the ghazal, dramatic monologue, and the villanelle.

For a fifth collection, however, I found the collection disjointed between subject and tone. There is a certain self-seriousness which works poems like "The Week It Happens", a poem in memory of Private Dave Lee who was killed during a peacetime military exercise, and "Pulse", a poem which responds to the writings of Sinologist Wang Gungwu, but it is incongruous when applied to poems like "The Gamble" and "Prognosis", the former since it adopts a heightened, dramatic tone to a childhood game of catch:

Believe me when I say it meant everything
not to be caught with your palm open,
pearl-white and marking you out among
sunned knuckles, wrists wrapped in veins,
nails rich and streaked with too much earth.

One wrong move could cost an afternoon,
seeing as there was no deliverance
from being chosen by your own hand
as fire, hunter, damned to the far-fetched chance
that your quarry, set free at a touch

might run out of steam, or in a moment's
distraction deliver an unlucky ally...

A generous reader might suggest that Kwek is being ironic, but a less generous one would say that opening with "Believe me" then does not serve the poem's purpose. The earnest tone, carefully modulated to always sound rigorous, leads to quizzically inconsequential results.

Kwek has a strong grasp of form and enjambment, but often it is the content that feels thrown together. The collection's title suggests a focus on history and memory, but the theme is played out in disjointed sequences. A poem about a grandfather's visit to Pyongyang is followed by a poem on childhood games, and a poem remembering a racist hate crime in London rubs shoulders with a poem about Noh performance masks. The blurb prepared by Carcanet states that Moving Home "moves son a big time and space map, from Icelandic tales to the Malayan Emergency, and more contemporary dramas". This sounds like a soundbite that allows people to point to one or two meaningful, socio-politically insightful poems and ignore the rest.

I concede that not everyone needs a strong thematic focus in a collection to enjoy it -- some people read in fragments or open to a random page. For these readers, there are definitely poems in here worth admiring. But for me, I was not satisfied.

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the first half, made me miss doing English literature as it sparked an analytical side of my brain that I haven’t used in a while. Probably not the most accessible poetry collection for someone who is not well versed in reading poetry. Also some of the exploration of the colonial past of south east Asia I had no context for, thus I couldn’t tell exactly what the poet was talking about (if anyone could direct me to where I might learn about the context behind these poems that would be fab). But kept me engaged over a series of short readings and has inspired me to look into more poetry.

[Yong Xiang · Rating 3 out of 5]

... how here the day transforms
and slows, its swollen alchemy. Bedside, your clock

mocks us both, pilfering with gloved hands from
every hour, while time, stealing through your un-
finished cup, lays itself down, the sun's bright psalm.

- Prognosis

Once is enough. The eye learns to plot
all of this in each new habitation,
recognise the empty room's joints, pivots,
dimensions - every house has its skeleton -
while the body learns it must carry less
from place to place, a kind of tidiness
that builds, hardens. Some call it fear,

of change, or losing what we cannot keep.
Others, experience. Truth is, it has no name
or station, and only the weight we give.
Old friend, I feel its steep tug again
this evening, across wire and lens
as you show me the house, a bare continent.
(These are the things that shake us in our sleep.)

- Moving House

[mm · Rating 4 out of 5]

The British publication of a Singapore poet, the collection features moments in Southeast Asia's history (the boat people abandoned in the waters off Singapore) to more recent moments like an actor being questioned by the police when he points out the racial discrimination in film casting. There are references to Icelandic myths to the colonial history of the region – a whole gamut of experiences of the author.
A good read.