Inspector Inspector
Published on 25. August 2022
Book
Paperback/Softback
88 pages
978-1-80017-222-7 (ISBN)
Description
Shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize 2024
Jee Leong Koh writes out of the heart of a contemporary reality most readers are familiar with at second or third hand. He writes of political exile and spiritual homelessness; he understands the perils of war, and the perils of certain kinds of peace. Inspector Inspector is his second Carcanet book (Steep Tea was published in 2015 and chosen as a Best Book of the Year in the Financial Times), and it develops his earlier themes with authority, passion and a sense of possible justice.
Steep Tea dialogued with women poets from across the world; Inspector Inspector struggles with the legacies of fathers, personal, poetic and political. Threaded through the erotic poems and poems based on interviews with fellow Singaporeans living in America are thirteen palinodes in the voice of the speaker's dead father, which he answers when the father's voice falls silent.
Jee Leong Koh's is an inclusive, generous and forgiving imagination, with an enviable mastery of traditional and experimental forms.
Jee Leong Koh writes out of the heart of a contemporary reality most readers are familiar with at second or third hand. He writes of political exile and spiritual homelessness; he understands the perils of war, and the perils of certain kinds of peace. Inspector Inspector is his second Carcanet book (Steep Tea was published in 2015 and chosen as a Best Book of the Year in the Financial Times), and it develops his earlier themes with authority, passion and a sense of possible justice.
Steep Tea dialogued with women poets from across the world; Inspector Inspector struggles with the legacies of fathers, personal, poetic and political. Threaded through the erotic poems and poems based on interviews with fellow Singaporeans living in America are thirteen palinodes in the voice of the speaker's dead father, which he answers when the father's voice falls silent.
Jee Leong Koh's is an inclusive, generous and forgiving imagination, with an enviable mastery of traditional and experimental forms.
Reviews / Votes
'This is a robust, assured collection from a mature poet with a sound grasp of traditional poetic form - and, crucially, a willingness to experiment with it.'Toh Wen Li, The Straits Times 'The phrases in Inspector Inspector, themselves all carefully chosen, do not reduce to one refrain, but they do reinforce certain thematic concerns, most prominently the will that applies to all the persons in the book (father, son, lovers, Singaporeans...), and into which I take the reader to be invited: let us remain alive to one another.'
H.L. Hix, Stride Magazine
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Carcanet Press Ltd
Dimensions
Height: 213 mm
Width: 89 mm
Thickness: 33 mm
Weight
374 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-80017-222-7 (9781800172227)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
Jee Leong Koh is the author of Steep Tea (Carcanet), named a Best Book of the Year by UK's Financial Times and a Finalist by Lambda Literary in the USA. His hybrid work of fiction, Snow at 5 PM: Translations of an insignificant Japanese poet, won the Singapore Literature Prize in English fiction. He was also shortlisted for the prize for The Pillow Book (Math Paper Press/Awai Books), Connor and Seal (Sibling Rivalry), Sample and Loop (Bench Press), and Inspector Inspector (Carcanet). Koh's work has been translated into Japanese, Chinese, Malay, Vietnamese, Russian, and Latvian. Originally from Singapore, Koh lives in New York City, where he heads the literary non-profit Singapore Unbound.