Local Anaesthetic: A Painless Approach to Singaporean Poetry: A Lower Secondary Teaching Guide for Teachers by Teachers
Pooja Nansi & Erin Woodford
Singapore: Ethos Books, 2014
ISBN: 9789810904159

This is the book for every teacher who has ever wanted to introduce Singaporean Poetry in their Literature classroom but didn't feel confident enough about doing it.

This guide, written by teachers for teachers, presents a painless and flexible approach to designing a unit around teaching Singaporean poetry in a way that is tailored to your own classroom. You will find a detailed guide to each poem and suggestions for how to teach them thematically or by difficulty level or even for the specific purpose of helping your students understand a particular poetic device – this allows you to choose the approach which works best for your classroom. And since we understand the daily grind of being a teacher, we've also provided ready‐to‐use lesson plans and guides for your convenience.

Ultimately, we all want our students to see that poetry isn't scary or unapproachable. The easiest way to understand anything is to begin with what we know and because many of the poems in this guide deal with a world that is familiar, they also provide an accessible launch pad from which students and teachers can explore poems from many other parts of the world together.

Fear No Poetry!: The Essential Guide to Close Reading
Gwee Li Sui
Singapore: Ethos Books, 2014
ISBN: 9789810904142

Afraid of poetry? Unable to make sense of a poem, let alone enjoy it? Having trouble discussing the web of meanings within a poem or, worse, writing about it? Confused by the kooky critical terms readers and teachers keep throwing around?

Fear no longer! Literary powerhouse Gwee Li Sui takes you from the baby steps of close reading to its finer, more moving moments. He discusses with rare energising generosity two kinds of poems: the “unseen poem” – the bane of many a student – and the scariest of verse for Singaporean readers, a poem by another Singaporean!

This book assumes nothing, starting with the basics. It aims to help you find your inner posture, grasp what a poem is and does, learn the critical language, and write competently. The book further comes jam‐packed with exercises for you to work on alone or with a few friends…

Read it as a guide, use it in the classroom, or argue with it in a reading group. Take on the challenge of FEAR NO POETRY! – and get ready to toughen your skills in close analysis as a new world of poetry and life explodes!

Troublemaker
Bertha Henson
Singapore: Ethos Books, 2014
ISBN: 9789810914738

Troublemaker is a collection of Bertha Henson's columns from her blog, Bertha Harian, as well as the now defunct Breakfast Network. They represent her take on the news of the day, spanning political and social happenings in Singapore from the middle of 2012. Sometimes serious, sometimes hilarious, Bertha brings her own inimitable style to news commentary, raising questions and zooming in on issues that concern the citizenry.

Aunty Lee's Deadly Specials
Ovidia Yu
US: William Morrow & Company, 2014
ISBN: 9780062338327

Rosie "Aunty" Lee, the feisty widow and amateur sleuth and proprietor of Singapore's best-loved home-cooking restaurant, is back in another delectable, witty mystery involving scandal and murder among the city's elite.

Few know more about what goes on in Singapore than Aunty Lee. When a scandal over illegal organ donation makes news, she already has a list of suspects. There's no time to snoop, though -- Aunty Lee's Delights is catering a brunch for local socialites Henry and Mabel Sung. Rumor has it that the Sungs' fortune is in trouble, and Aunty Lee wonders if the gossip is true. But soon after arriving at the Sungs', her curiosity turns to suspicion. Why is the guesthouse in the garden locked up--and what's inside? Where is the missing guest of honor? Then Mabel Sung and her son, Leonard, are found dead. The authorities blame it on Aunty Lee's special stewed chicken with buah keluak, a local black nut that can be poisonous if cooked improperly. She's certain the deaths are murder -- and that they're somehow linked to the organ donor scandal. To save her business and her reputation, she's got to prove it -- and unmask a dangerous killer.

"Roll Out the Champagne, Singapore!": An Exuberant Celebration of the Nation's 50th Birthday
Catherine Lim
Singapore: Marshall Cavendish, 2014
ISBN: 9789814561587

30 stories about ordinary Singaporeans at their best and worst, their joys and griefs and angers, their dreams fulfilled or lost. They are tales about the awesome human condition and the even more awesome human spirit, interweaved with the author's vignettes of her nearly 50 years in Singapore, such as how she came from Malaysia to live in Singapore and her run-in with then prime minister Goh Chok Tong.

When the Goddesses Die
Latha
Singapore: Epigram Books, 2014
ISBN: 9789814615143

No longer silenced, the voices of Tamil women within Singaporean literature are given a powerful outlet by Latha, in her first collection of stories to be translated into English. The old lady forced to move because of an en bloc sale; the socially anxious student unable to leave her rented room because of a funeral in the house; the religious devotee taken over during a spiritual re-enactment; the daughter caring for her terminally ill mother; and the enigmatic Alyssa, who lives with her grandparents on Pulau Ubin as a child, and must deal with incredible physical loss as an adult. Culled from and expanding upon Naan Kolai Seyum Penkal, winner of the Singapore Literature Prize in 2008, When the Goddesses Die entertains and elucidates, covering a broad range of social issues with grace and irreverence.

Here and Beyond: 12 Stories
Cyril Wong (ed.)
Singapore: Ethos Books, 2014
ISBN: 9789810779917

This is an anthology of twelve stories from twelve unique Singaporean voices: S. Rajaratnam, Yeo Wei Wei, Goh Sin Tub, Simon Tay, Stephanie Ye, Alfian Sa’at, Suchen Christine Lim, Wena Poon, O Thiam Chin, ClaireTham, Philip Jeyaretnam and Felix Cheong.

These stories chart the emotional ups and downs of protagonists who strive to find meaning against the backdrop of negotiations between the local and the global, between the past and an ever-changing, urbanised present. Rediscovering the self and the value of relationships form the focus of these tales, which range from the realistic to the surreal, with the occasional epiphany about one’s mortality and the meaning of existence within the bustling city.

Art Studio
Yeng Pway Ngon (translated by Goh Beng Choo & Loh Guan Liang)
Singapore: Math Paper Press, 2014
ISBN: 9789810797508

Singapore, 1980s. Amid the tumult of political promise and upheaval, Yan Pei and his students struggle to pursue art in a rented studio. Yan Pei, a penniless artist, sacrifices more than his marriage to perfect his craft. His student Si Xian makes an irrevocable decision after Ning Fang, the subject of his unrequited love, leaves him for India. Jian Xiong gives up art – and his humanity – when communist politics force him to flee into the Malayan jungle. A story of disparate paths crossing continents over the span of forty years after Singapore's independence, Art Studio is a stirring meditation on art, politics and memory.

Seasonal Disorders/Impractical Lessons
Paul Tan
Singapore: Landmark Books, 2014
ISBN: 9789814189545

Paul Tan's fourth collection shuttles between two metropolises. In Tokyo, the new and the picturesque compete with the alienation of cosmopolitan life, while in Singapore, the familiar often sharpens the irony and cynicism of urban society.

At turns epigrammatic and thoughtful, or self-doubting and witty, these poems are a reminder of poetry's ability to connect the deeply personal with the larger narratives of country and culture.

One Thousand and One Nights: Love Poems
Gwee Li Sui
Singapore: Landmark Books, 2014
ISBN: 9789814189538

From the poet’s Preface:
"When love ends, what do you keep? Some autumns ago, I met a remarkable woman and we fell in love. She is a Korean novelist, I a Singaporean poet. Across oceans of differences and the habits of age, we forged a way to love and to keep faith. Then, as mysteriously as it all started, it ended about a thousand and one nights later.

Modern storytellers beguile us. They bring such freshness to the endings of tales that we willingly hold our breaths in a promise of them. But the best bits are in the middle where often it feels like the adventure can never die. Every day is vast with possibilities as the heart marvels at the new way it beats. These are what I keep."

Standing in the Corner: Poems From a Real Childhood
Anne Lee Tzu Pheng
Singapore: Landmark Books, 2014
ISBN: 9789814189521

Does the word "childhood" call up mushy sentiments and nostalgic memories where time has given a rosy glow to what has long gone?

This collection presents a different side to Singapore's award-winning poet who sets out to recall a real childhood, where children are not the little innocents people think all children are, and growing up is full of hazards, not the least of which is the author herself, recalling some of her experiences growing up in the 1950s.

Soul's Festival: Collected Poems 1980-1997
Anne Lee Tzu Pheng
Singapore: Landmark Books, 2014
ISBN: 9789814189514

This collection brings together in one volume, the author's first four volumes of poetry which have long been out of print: Prospect Of A Drowning (1980), Against The Next Wave (1988), The Brink Of An Amen (1991), and Lambada By Galilee & Other Surprises (1997). These won her numerous awards and international recognition, including the Singapore Cultural Medallion for Literature (1985), the SEA (South East Asia) WRITE Award 1987, and the Gabriela Mistral Award (1995) from the Republic of Chile. The author has gone on to publish more recent volumes, but readers will welcome the re-publication of this earlier work which ensured her reputation as Singapore's foremost woman poet of international stature.