You're on Mute!

/ Foreword by Cheyenne Alexandria Phillips & Melizarani T. Selva

…

SINGPOWRIMO —
30 days of intense poetry writing!

Every April, 6.7k members are invited on a tumultuous mission to write a BUNCH of poetry and post it online. A digital writing group, if you will. 

SingPoWriMo.com celebrates those works.
What was once a physical anthology has now made its home online, where the community lives. 

This year’s editors, Melizarani and Cheyenne (otherwise M’n’C a.k.a multinational corporation) not only personify the coincidental acronym but also have not had in-person meetings since they took on the roles, with Melizarani being ‘stuck’ in Malaysia while Cheyenne works from home in Singapore. 

This is their story. 

(Law and Order dun-dun sound)

*

Melizarani: So, when I first met Cheyenne on Google Meet, I was SO FASCINATED with her colour-coded bookshelf in the background. All the reds and yellows so neatly arranged according to Pantone, plus she knew where every book was! I even challenged her once and she could point to a specific title with eyes closed. It was radiant... like those chakra alignment images you see at yoga studios... but BETTER! The morning sunshine would bounce off Cheyenne’s colourful bookshelf and envelop our working friendship with its joyous-ness. We’ve been seeing so much of each other’s groggy faces during 9am video calls, biting into breakfast between hours of brainstorming in our pyjamas... and honestly, it has been the most fun! Has it been fun for you ah, Cheyenne? 

Cheyenne: Working with you, Meliza is a joyous occasion. I don’t even feel like I am working. And I enjoy your quirks! Every time Meliza asks a question, she uses ‘kan’ at the back. Like ‘It won’t work like this, kan?’ or ‘But this is what they mean, kan?’ And with my basic knowledge of Malay, I knew what the suffix meant. But it took some getting used to and keeping my face neutral on Google Meets is a real skill. (Meliza and I have not worked together before. I didn’t want to be rude. Hehe.)  Now we laugh about it and I know the different ‘kan’s. It like ‘lah’, ‘lor’,’ leh’ but it is all ‘kan’! I’m sure I’m going to use it soon too. It is only a matter of time. 

Melizarani: We got on the same page very quickly kan? It has been so synergetic and seamless, as if we’ve been working together our whole lives. I remember discussing the theme of this issue with Cheyenne and we were both immediately keen to lean into the realm of empathy and humanity. We wanted this issue to be a collective checking in of sorts, on writers in Singapore and Malaysia. To embrace the surreal and awkward agony of the Covid-19 era. This was our chance to introduce new names to literary communities on both sides of the causeway. We wanted to know how writers upkeep their human selves while juggling their creative demands. We wanted to see them as we saw ourselves, human who are tired but trying. 

Cheyenne: While SingPoWriMo stands for Singapore Poetry Writing Month, there are members from our neighbouring countries writing along with us. We also cannot escape the fact that Meliza and myself are both Malaysian and Singaporean respectively and that we were teleconferencing from Singapore to Malaysia for this issue. Together we learnt that Covid-19 spared neither country. We shared stories of how the different communities were struggling. In Subang Jaya, there was a school teacher who could not make ends meet and began selling Milo on the side; meanwhile, in Singapore, ice cream uncles sell their wares in bulk to Singaporeans because there are barely any tourists to get a $1 ice cream in rainbow bread. Stories like these are shared experiences of the Covid-19 era and in part drove our desire to include writers from both sides of the causeway.  

Melizarani: Between commissioning writers and selecting poems with Hidhir (this is a lieeee), Cheyenne and I collected our thoughts in the form of meeting minutes on a shared Word Doc “Cheyenne x Meliza” with the default text format of Arial font size 12. One day, Cheyenne lets me in on an open secret, or rather a quiet fact about herself. She tells me that she has Dyslexia and I Google “HOW TO HELP FRIEND WITH DYSLEXIA” only to be more confused by the search results. Cheyenne takes the trouble to explain to me the tyranny of fonts — how serif fonts like Times New Roman with 1.5 spacing enabled her to read text with greater ease and comfort. She also introduced me to OpenDyslexia, an open-source software with a Chrome extension to help people with Dyslexia read webpages. If you are reading this now, click this link to try it out for yourself! 

Cheyenne: Because of Meliza’s allyship (read: obsession with a lot of love) with helping a friend with dyslexia, you will notice that the format of this issue is different from previous issues. It didn’t make sense to have a website design that one of the editors could barely read.  Hopefully, this way, more people will be able to comfortably read the poems and features.  With the theme “You’re on MUTE!”, this issue encompasses how writers are doing after being pushed into the digital age by Covid-19. 

Melizarani: It also references the ridiculous amount of times Cheyenne and I have shouted “You’re on MUTE!” at each other and fellow writers of this issue... while being on mute. 

Cheyenne: Ha.Ha. In this issue, Ally Chua took to the Twittersphere, asking about the Circuit Breaker / Movement Control Order, checking in on the writing community and curated a range of tweets that encapsulates a small part of the Covid-19 era. 

Melizarani: We also have Plates Magazine creator Dee May gathering together stories and Instagram photos of how writers in Singapore and Malaysia are feeding themselves during quarantine. 

Cheyenne: Lastly, we have Irie Aman who interviewed various literary and creative event organisers about their experiences making art online. 

(Hidhir Razak is waiting in the lobby)

Melizarani: Oh hey, Hidhir is here. Cheyenne let him in! 

Hidhir: Hello fellow editors! It is I, the last-minute poetry editor of this issue, which is very fitting, because “last minute” describes me very well!

Cheyenne: Eh Hidhir, I totally forgot you were also a moderator this year.

Hidhir: Actually, I also forgot haha. SO many things were happening this year, it’s easy to kind of just lose track of stuff. But yes, I was one of the mods along with returning senior mod Natalie Wang, as well as Benzie Dio, Nabilah Said, and Singapore Literature Prize 2020 winner Marylyn Tan! 

Cheyenne: YAYYYYY! Also, what was being a mod this year like, for you?

Hidhir: Many things have not been business-as-usual in 2020, but thankfully most of the back-end work behind SingPoWriMo hasn’t changed all that much compared to previous iterations of SPWM. What was a bit different this year was that the senior moderators were generating prompts against the backdrop of the pandemic. 

Melizarani: Hmm how did the ‘rona impact the overall vibe of SPWM this year? 

Hidhir: SPWM ended up becoming a treasure trove of Covid-19 centric poems. It became, one, an important outlet for members of the writing community in Singapore (and elsewhere) to express their experience and, consequently, two, an archive of works engaging directly with one of the worst pandemics in modern history.

Melizarani: That’s incredible kan? Someday, if anyone wants to explain what life was like in 2020 to the next generation of poetry babies, all they have to do is send them a link to this Issue! 

Hidhir: Pretty much! The poems picked for this issue are not the most technically complicated, the most liked and commented, or the cleverest, wittiest poems SPWM has to offer. Instead, each poem here offers something important, something that speaks from, of, and to a moment in our history. These poems, we feel, are the products of poets unmuting themselves on SPWM and we hope they inspire all of you to do the same.

(Cheyenne gives handclap reaction)

Melizarani: Well said! OMG Cheyenne, so glad we got Hidhir kan. 

Cheyenne: Yes! THANK YOU HIDHIR (Cheyenne makes a heart with her hands)! I think it is safe to say that the THREE of us hope you enjoy this issue and find the comfort you may need in these trying times. 

Melizarani: Share the bits you love with your fwens. 

Hidhir: Gather around the glare of your laptops. 

Cheyenne: Get together on Zoom and have a read-athon. 

Melizarani: Like Watch-Party but no...like Read Party...but no...

Cheyenne: YES. Correcc! Read Party!!! 

Hidhir: And remember not to shout:

M’n’C and Hidhir: (with gusto and slightly out of sync) YOU’RE ON MUTE!!!

/ Melizarani T.Selva is a Malaysian writer and spoken word poet. To date, she has performed in six countries with notable performances at StoryFest Singapore, ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival and TEDxGateway. Her first book, Taboo is a poetic exploration of her Masters’ thesis on the constructs and representations of the Malaysian Indian Identity. Her poems have been translated in French and Bahasa Malaysia. Presently, she co-runs If Walls Could Talk: Poetry Open Mic, the Malaysia National Poetry Slam and has co-published an anthology of 100 poems by 61 poets from Malaysia titled When I Say Spoken, You Say Word!

/ Cheyenne Alexandria Phillips is a writer and performer based in Singapore. Her writing revolves around the environment, culture and identity. She has co-written and performed in two plays focusing on Eurasian narratives and personal history: In The Twine (commissioned for Singapore Writer's Festival 2018) and For The Record (Centre 42's Basement Workshop Residency 2017). She has also hosted eco-literary walks around MacRitchie Reservoir as part of Singapore Water Month 2018 in collaboration with Public Utilities Board. Cheyenne’s published works can be found in Contour: A Lyrical Cartography of Singapore (2019) and Who are you my country? (2018). She is also a licensed Tourist Guide.