Collections
Burn After Dawn
Release date: September 21st 2024 (SG)
Publisher: Landmark Books
Order via Epigram Bookstore here / Kinokuniya here
Physical copies available at Book Bar SG and Kinokuniya SG
Finalist for Best Literary Work in the Singapore Book Awards 2025
Top 5 for Dr Alan HJ Chan’s ‘Spirit of Singapore Book’ Prize 2025
“Sher Ting’s extraordinary Burn After Dawn is poetry as lyric hallucination, fed by the blue flame of collective memory, in which even the monsters of myth must hide from the reality of violence. The poems trace the brutal history of the Japanese Occupation of Singapore, and the ensuing massacre of language, cultural traditions, families, and the land. Sher Ting works with a range of forms—a crossword, abecedarian, outline, an autopsy—as well as lush, flickering free verse, all to raid “silence / the only violence that is immortal—” Burn After Dawn represents language in the service of survival, “a reckoning in itself.” I am in awe” — Diane Seuss, Author of Pulitzer-Prize winning collection, frank: sonnets, and Modern Poetry
“At long last a book of English poetry that dares to sink its teeth into Singapore’s experience of World War Two. [The poems] remind me again of poetry’s ability to unsettle language, to trouble the iconic images and emotions of a moment we think we know through documents, textbooks, novels, TV shows.”
—Tse Hao Guang, Author of The International Left-Hand Calligraphy Association
“Here is a poet parsing the overwhelm of what we come from—how much violence, how much grief—who holds up the light to the dark and the dark to the light, illuminating a simultaneity of forces, including human capacities for both cruelty and care. Sher Ting’s Burn After Dawn is a dynamic, assured, resounding debut”
—Gabrielle Bates, Author of Judas Goat
“In a time where violence continues to be swept under the carpet, this accomplished and challenging debut collection strikes an aching balance between the cadence and texture of real lives under siege, and the song that arises unmistakably from them.” —Theophilus Kwek, Winner of the Cikada Prize and author of Moving House
Chapbooks
Bodies of Separation
Release date: February 1st 2023
Publisher: Cathexis Northwest Press
Order here
Physical copies available at Book Bar SG
Finalist of the Eric Hoffer Book Awards 2024
Reviews: https://vagabondcitylit.com/2022/11/21/in-review-bodies-of-separation-by-chim-sher-ting/
https://www.fullhouseliterary.com/reviews/bodiesofseparation
‘Our names were all expanse/ 2718 miles and the length of an umbilical cord,’ reads the opening poem of Sher Ting’s astounding collection BODIES OF SEPARATION. It is merely the first instance of candor and beauty in a book rife with such lightning-bright revelations. These poems are a tender missive to all the liminal places a body in migration passes through to meet itself: in yearning, in languages lost or retrieved, in spaces that hold us conditionally. There is an undeniable, oceanic pull to these poems, and Sher Ting is a writer I trust to sweep me out into wild currents where anything is possible— and back again to safety. – Jihyun Yun, Author of Some Are Always Hungry
An assured debut that feels more like a full-length collection than a chapbook in its impressive amplitude and depth, a mature, meditative voice with a beautiful tone and lyrical pitch that give these explorations of diasporic themes a compelling freshness of insight and imagination. Especially exquisite are the graceful cadences that enable each poem to find its measure and home between the borders of two languages. – Boey Kim Cheng, Author of Between Stations: Essays and The Singer and Other Poems
In this vibrant, valiant collection, Sher Ting excavates the complexities of coming from multiple countries, dual languages, and diverse influences… Often writing on dislocation and the isolation created by brute forces, Sher Ting bravely denounces the interrelated structures and cruelties of racism and bigotry. Painting with a masterfully defiant brush, Sher Ting cleverly brings us into her world of clashing realities, identities, and idols and asks: “Why does our existence/ have to be a fight?” Sher Ting is an electrifying, singular voice in poetry; a rising star. Go read this book! – Jose Hernandez Diaz, Author of The Fire Eater & Bad Mexican, Bad American
The Long-Lasting Grief of Foxes
Release date: September 2023
Publisher: Mouthfeel Press
Order here
Physical copies available at Book Bar SG
Long-lasting (adj.): A deep, bone-aching perpetuity. Or word play on 龙 (the Chinese word for “dragon”), the creatures that have a larger foothold on our realities than we’d let on. Our mother tongue is afflicted with a compendium of beasts—from foxes to dragons to butterflies. Our existence is always inexorably linked with wildness, an act of rebellion against external forces. This chapbook explores the Chinese language, in addition to Chinese mythology and pop culture references, to reflect on the tension of minority existence and generational trauma. It seeks to confront the metaphorical dragons in our family, from war to racism to cultural practices and stereotypes, including ideas of femininity and filial piety, to understand how they’ve shaped us into who we are today.
“So then,/ why do I feel so sad, like a girl wanting to move on when/ all the world has done is end?” So goes the lyrical inquiry of ancestry, language, and memories yearning to break free of their “haunting, damning mountain sound” in Sher Ting’s second chapbook The Long-Lasting Grief of Fox. Here, the speaker shatters existing tropes and conventions, and examines both gender (“What were we,/ but women living// Our mother’s lie?”) and the notion of legends in order to unearth deeper truths: “Even an animal of light knows its shadows the minute it is born.” Rich in imagery and metaphor, The Long-Lasting Grief of Foxes leaves readers with the idea of the dream itself as hungry for more beyond its own realm: “That’s the beauty of Nowhere. The ghost of a life and the way we’d drive on till morning.” -Rosebud Ben-Oni, winner of the Alice James Award for If This Is the Age We End Discovery
The Long-Lasting Grief of Foxes is a striking debut for its mastery of syntax, fusing lyrical precision and popular culture address. The result is a luminous, haunting and quietly subversive collection. Sher Ting reveals the tensions of language, minority existence, feminine stereotypes and generational trauma in a voice entirely her own. – Michelle Cahill, Author of Daisy and Woolf
sherting.com 