When the Lights Went Off
by Paul Tan
As the poet navigates through middle age, beset by questions on aging, love and loss, and the incipient awareness of mortality, these poems give shape and meaning to those attendant, oft-unspoken anxieties. Through coy irony, imagined personas and leaps of creative faith, Tan’s fifth collection of poetry interrogates the redemptive possibilities of art, promising a journey through the familiar and the off-kilter.
Size: 130 x 195 mm
Extent: 86 pages
Binding: Paperback
Weight: 138 g
ISBN: 978-981-4189-86-6
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Reviews
Frost’s criteria for good poetry – wisdom and delight – are abundantly manifest here, carried by a voice that is characteristically modest, beguiling, and honest.
– Boey Kim Cheng
Paul Tan’s new poems are graceful, meditative explorations of the edge in its various avatars. These tensile, tonally rich poems resonant with the teachings of wabi sabi, he transforms the depredations of time and nature into jewel-like reflections.
– Ranjit Hoskote
Growing old with Paul Tan is a distinct pleasure … his art has gained new rhythms even as it keeps re-establishing familiarity.
– Gwee Li Sui