The Orchid Folios

Mok Zining

Summary

“When you take an orchid out of its pot, you must first loosen the roots’ hold on the soil. Late last evening as I unravelled the braids of the shattered phalaenopsis, I saw how the ends were white and shrivelled from neglect. You have to do it gently—it’s like combing hair. I remember Mum’s fingers running through mine, and mine through hers, until the final months when all of it started to fall.” 
 
 
A pot shatters. An arrangement falls apart. A florist finds herself amidst the scattered leaves of history. At once a poetry collection and a documentary novella, The Orchid Folios reimagines the orchid as a living, breathing document of history: a history that enmeshes the personal, colonial, linguistic, and biotechnological with the Vanda Miss Joaquim, the symbol of Singapore’s postcolonial hybridity. While the Orchid has shaped the fantastical narratives that govern our multiracial City in a Garden, it continues to shape-shift and bloom on its own terms, challenging us to imagine a decolonised Singapore. This is the organism at the heart of The Orchid Folios—by turns stark and unruly, documenting and challenging the narratives that are the roots of our national consciousness.

Available since: 08/12/2022.

Print length: 144 pages.

Other books that might interest you

The Field in Winter

David Clarke

The Field in Winter, the third collection of poetry by David Clarke, winner of the Michael Marks Award, elegantly reflects on memory, time, and the very particular landscape of loss, in a calendar of poems, a 'charm of words' that track and loop through seasons of nature and living.
The relationship between the environment, the human body and the self takes centre stage here in poetry that is concerned with being in the world - senses alive to the detail of things, the trunk of a linden tree , the shock of cold water, the frenzy of bees and blossom. But these remarkable poems also write towards the intangible in the late summer's dusk – an empty cage, a bird flown; history's slow grind and echo. Clarke's elegies reach out to touch what passes us fleetingly in a moment of time – 'before the tongue can catch them' – held for that second, precious, in his poised and finely weighted poetry.

Show book

Improvised Explosive Device

Arji Manuelpillai

Improvised Explosive Device is a startlingly innovative exploration of extremism, hate crime and violence by poet Arji Manuelpillai. In this powerful and unsettling first collection, Manuelpillai presents a vision of the contemporary haunted by Melville's image of the whale – the terror beneath the surface of the sea. His uncompromising focus on violence is laced with gallows humour and the surreal, framed against the mundane detritus of modern life: two boys playing Mortal Kombat; a field of old trainers; the lonely glare of laptop light; a suspicious looking package in the back seat of a van.
The poems in Improvised Explosive Device emerged through research and interviews with academics, sociologists, and former members of extremist groups and their families – from the English Defence League and the National Front to ISIS and the Tamil Tigers. These complex, unnerving texts ask a series of important questions. What drives a person to commit a radical act of violence? How is that violence mediated through screens and social media? And how does the British government police marginalised groups? Improvised Explosive Device is a brave, surprising and risk-taking book; it will change the way you look at the world.
"Refusing glib analysis and easy answers, Improvised Explosive Device is a work of radical empathy, fuelled by honesty and compassion, both for those stirred to violence against minorities, and those who suffer from it." Rishi Dastidar
"The project of Arji Manuelpillai's Improvised Explosive Device leans into the mighty disciplines of poetry, sociology, and reportage to formulate an arresting debut which contests the ways we're conditioned to internalise notions of terrorism, nationalism and belonging...a bold and startling new work." Anthony Anaxagorou

Show book

Plastiville

Maria Kownacka

Discover the magic of Plastiville, the perfect book to help your child embark on their reading journey!

Join Antonina and her delightful new friends — Plasty, Plastilou the dog, Plasticat the kitty-cat, Plastella the dairy cow, and many more — in a world crafted especially for beginning readers. Maria Kownacka's charming stories come alive with:

    Simple, Rhyming Sentences: Easy to understand and remember, helping your child build confidence with every page.
    Large Print: Designed for little eyes, making reading comfortable and enjoyable.
    Beautiful Color Illustrations: Vibrant pictures that spark imagination and bring the stories to life.

Plastiville isn't just a book; it's a fun and engaging adventure that makes learning to read a joyous experience!

Show book

Color Me White

Alfred Lloyd

Code of Conduct Good qualities in me You will find As you explore my body… And my mind Should you like what you see Then, tell it to others… Sing praises of me In halls and corridors But, if faults are what You see in me Please my love… Tell it first to me.

Show book

Born in the USA - Exploring...

Emma Lazarus, Alan Seeger,...

Poetry. A form of words that seems so elegantly simple in one verse and so cleverly complex in another. Each poet has a particular style, an individual and unique way with words and yet each of us seems to recognise the path and destination of where the verses lead, even if sometimes the full comprehension may be a little beyond us.

Through the centuries every culture has produced verse to symbolize and to describe everything from everyday life, natural wonders, the human condition and even in its more hubristic moments, the crushing triumph of an enemy.

In the volumes of this series we take a look through the prism of individual regions of the United States through the centuries and decades.

The United States may be many things: the world’s policeman, a bully, a shameless purveyor of mass market culture but it also, in its better moments, a standard bearer for truth, transparency, equality and the more positive qualities of democracy.

Little wonder that’s its poets are rightly acknowledged as wonders of their art. Leading lights in the fight against slavery and for equality, even if the rest of the Nation is finding it problematic to catch up.

New York state is more often overshadowed by its energetic and overwhelming five boroughs of its namesake city. But among its other cities, towns and countryside is a veritable who’s who of classic poets including Walt Whitman, Edith Wharton, Alan Seeger, Herman Melville and Philip Freneau. Their words and verse record and reveal a wide range of topics and subjects as they focus their poetic talents on the State of their birth.

Show book

Things That Happen - And Other...

Bhaskar Chakrabarti

Bhaskar Chakrabarti's poetry is synonymous with the romantic melancholia inherent to Calcutta. His trenchant poetic voice was one of the most significant to emerge in the 1960s and '70s-perhaps the most prolific period of modern Bengali poetry. Spanning the rise of militant leftism, the spread of crippling poverty across India, the war in Bangladesh, the influx of millions of refugees, the dark, dictatorial days of Indira Gandhi's reign, and the disillusionment of communist rule in Bengal, Chakrabarti's poems plumb the depths of urban angst, expressing the spirit of sadness and alienation in delicate metaphors wrapped in deceptively lucid language.

In this first-ever comprehensive translation of Chakrabarti's work, award-winning translator Arunava Sinha masterfully articulates that clarity of vision, retaining the unique cadence and idioms of the Bengali language. Presenting verses and prose poems from all of Chakrabarti's life-from his first volume, When Will Winter Come, published in 1971, to his last, The Language of Giraffes, published just before his death in 2005, and collecting several unpublished works as well-Things That Happen and Other Poems introduces the world to a brilliant and universal poetic voice of urban life.

Show book