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[Call for Submissions] 8th Singapore Poetry Contest
16 May, 2022
In conjunction with Gaudy Boy’s April 1, 2022 publication of Jhani Randhawa’s TIME REGIME, the winner of the Gaudy Boy Poetry Book Prize, SUSPECT is holding the 8th Singapore Poetry Contest with a call for submissions inspired by the title of this extraordinary book of poems.
”What is the gender of leisure, of music? What is the performance of time? What is the preservation of a different kind of heart from the plush cab of a truck taking slow turns toward the lake? Wet brown ash of summer. I feel a tangle clotting my esophagus.”—from “Time Regime” by Jhani Randhawa
We are looking for poems that use the chiming words “time” and “regime” together or separately in imaginative ways. The words must be used as they are, although different forms of the words (pluralized, adjectival, etc.) may appear elsewhere in the poem. Submissions may be on any theme, but they will be judged for the creative use of the words “time” and “regime,” as much as they will be for overall excellence.
The contest is open to everyone, living anywhere.
Awards of USD300, 200, and 100 will go to the top three winners. The winning poems will be published on SUSPECT; non-winning poems will be considered for publication as well.
The judge for this year’s Singapore Poetry Contest is Jee Leong Koh, the editor-in-chief of SUSPECT. Koh’s book Steep Tea (Carcanet) was named a Best Book of the Year by UK’s Financial Times and a Finalist by Lambda Literary in the US. His second Carcanet book Inspector Inspector will be released in August 2022.
Friends and family of the judge are allowed to submit entries too. Judging will be based solely on poetic merit. We reserve the right not to make any or all awards, should the quality of entries not merit them.
Contest entry is free. Please submit a maximum of three poems. Only unpublished poems will be considered. Posting on weblog, Facebook, and other social media does not constitute publication. No, simultaneous submissions, please. Please email your submission to Jee at jkoh@singaporeunbound.org. The poem(s) must be pasted into the body of the email, together with a short cover letter giving your name, mailing address, and brief biographical note.
The deadline for submissions is Monday, May 16, 2022. Results will be announced in June, 2022. We ask for non-exclusive rights to publication on the SUSPECT website and subsequent print anthologies, if any.
