Inside the historic Arts House in Singapore, an audience sits in quiet anticipation. The black-walled auditorium is still as poet ArunDitha steps forward, a book in hand. She closes her eyes briefly, takes a deep breath, and begins. Her voice rises, wrapping the audience in a hypnotic web of spoken word, enhanced by vocal effects recorded live before their eyes.
This electrifying performance marks the launch of Rib/cage, the debut publication from Afterimage, a new literary press under Sing Lit Station. The collection brings together the works of three poets from different generations, creating a poetic dialogue that transcends time.
A Conversation Across Generations
Rib/cage is more than just a collection of poetry—it is a meeting of voices, bridging past and present. The three poets featured in the anthology each bring distinct experiences and styles to the table.
At 25, Zeha is the youngest of the trio, a non-binary artist whose experimental poetry defies conventions of form, genre, and language. Their work sits alongside that of ArunDitha, a globally recognized performance poet whose words erupt with the force of nature. Completing the trio is 89-year-old Rosaly Puthucheary, a literary pioneer whose work has shaped Singapore’s poetic landscape for decades.
Despite their differences in age and background, their poems intertwine, forming a layered, intergenerational conversation. Each piece interacts with the others, not as puzzle pieces fitting together neatly, but like strokes of paint on a canvas—overlapping, blending, and carving new paths.
The Power of Poetic Echoes
Zeha reflects on this connection:
“Reading this folio is an act of time-travel. I wonder about struggles that are universal and timeless. These poems don’t just complement each other—they also contrast, just like real conversations between generations.”
For ArunDitha, the collection reinforces a sense of belonging in a larger narrative:
“Seeing how beautifully our pieces dance together makes me feel part of a voice much larger than my own—the echo of diaspora, the sound of collective alienation.”
Reviving a Literary Legacy
One of the most profound aspects of Rib/cage is its role in rekindling interest in Rosaly Puthucheary’s work. Despite a career spanning over 50 years and 15 published titles, this is the first time her poetry has been anthologized alongside other poets. It is also her first time reading her work live at a literary event.
At the launch, she holds the microphone firmly, reading from her poem Future. By the final stanza, her voice wavers, and tears fill her eyes—mirroring the emotions rippling through the audience.
“I sit emptied of belongings in the nakedness of new birth.
With a suitcase of longings, I face the rooms of the future.”
For Puthucheary, poetry has long been an outlet for processing life’s struggles. She recalls writing her first poem at 15, inspired by the sudden silence of a close friend who had stopped speaking to her without explanation.
“At first, I thought I was writing a letter. But my brother saw a phrase I had written—’tired, my tongue tied in a knot’—and he told me, ‘This is poetry.’ That’s when I realized what I had done.”
A Shared Emotional Landscape
Throughout Rib/cage, poetry is used as a means of exploring deep personal experiences. Puthucheary’s work on marriage and divorce appears in the collection just after ArunDitha’s Storm, a poem about witnessing domestic violence as a child. The two pieces, written years apart, create a powerful emotional resonance.
“I wrote Storm over 12 years ago when my mother was still alive,” ArunDitha shares. “It was a way to exorcise the demon of domestic violence from my memory. Seeing it placed next to Rosaly’s poems makes me realize how our stories ripple across time.”
Zeha, who revisited their entire archive for Rib/cage, describes how recontextualization gave new meaning to older works.
“In the process of editing Trapdoors, which I wrote when I was 14, I realized that placed beside ArunDitha’s Unidentifiable Object and Rosaly’s The Nightmare, it no longer felt childish. Instead, it became a necessary entry point into the other poems.”
For all three poets, the collection is a testimony to the power of shared expression. As Zeha eloquently puts it:
“Our poems intertwine—to give strength and to take some away. It is a privilege to witness the souls of women who have gone through so much more than me. In this folio, I see my future, my present, and my past.”
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