Commonwealth: Singapore launch
Join us for the Singapore launch of Commonwealth, Theophilus Kwek’s latest poetry collection. Rooted in the histories of Bukit Ho Swee and the legacies of empire, Commonwealth unearths stories of displacement, resilience, and imagined futures in one of Singapore’s oldest estates.
The afternoon unfolds with Theophilus reading from the collection, before Cheng Nien Yuan and Crispin Rodrigues join him in a spirited conversation on poetry, memory, and the histories we carry. Stay on for a Q&A and book signing to round off the day.
About the Book
One of Singapore’s oldest public housing estates, the name “Commonwealth” also gestures to the long tail of the British Empire and still-potent dreams of equitable distribution. Theophilus Kwek’s Commonwealth uncovers rich seams of history, replete with conquests, tragedies and shared visions of the future. Taking its starting-point as the massive Bukit Ho Swee fires of the 196os – an event as deeply seared into the history of the poet’s family as the nation’s own – Commonwealth traces the dislocations and relocations that have come before it, and in its wake.
Theophilus’s earlier poetry collections dealt with questions of personal rootedness and larger-scale displacement. With his signature adeptness in poetic form, Theophilus embarks on a new departure with Commonwealth, drawing on a wide array of documentary and oral history sources to address upheavals of individual and collective lives within our densely populated city.
About the Speakers
Theophilus Kwek has been shortlisted twice for the Singapore Literature Prize. He is the youngest recipient of the Cikada Prize, for poetry that “defends the inviolability of life”, and part of the Forbes 30 Under 30 Class of 2024. His latest book is Commonwealth (Carcanet Press, 2025).
Crispin Rodrigues is a Singapore-based poet and author of four collections of poetry. His latest collection is dragon.paper.wind (Ethos, 2024).
Cheng Nien Yuan is a Singaporean performance scholar and dramaturg. She is presently a Faculty Early Career Award Fellow at the Singapore University of Technology and Design. Her work explores the politics and poetics of storytelling and dramaturgy in the digital age, intercultural theatre, and oral histories in/as performance. She has a forthcoming book, The Storytelling State: Performing Lives in Singapore, published by the University of Hawai’i Press (2025).
