This collection by the award-winning writer Goh Poh Seng is the first volume of his poetry published in North America. It spans more than thirty-five years of his work and traverses cultures as well as continents.
Goh's settings range from the wharfs at Singapore's harbour to a backwater bar in Papeete, Tahiti, from a park in Halifax to the streets of Vancouver. His characters are unforgettable: Fely, a young woman from Ermita who sells her body to support her eight-year-old daughter; an old sailor who has solo-circumnavigated the globe; a Vietcong soldier who loses his family and finally his own life to the horror of the Vietnam war.
Even more wide-ranging is the perceptual and emotional depth of the poems. Goh brings a lifetime of love, despair, passion and honesty to his work; with the skill of a master craftsman, he uses the most graceful and lyrical language to understand his world and to bring us closer to ourselves and each other.
The first collection of poetry published in North America by "one of Asia's finest living poets" ("Asia Magazine").
