State of Play brings together conversations between an international line-up of poets, taking place over the course of a year. Edited by Eddie Tay, a Singapore-born, Hong Kong-based poet and literature professor and Jennifer Wong, a Hong Kong-born, British-based poet, this anthology offers rich insights into these questions and the ways a life lived in many places can invigorate one’s writing.

With themes ranging from the sense of home and racialised expectations, to community and language, as well as the process of writing poetry, these creative discussions delve into the complexities and diversity of identity in the days of global citizenship and cultural diaspora. Find out more, read excerpts and listen to / watch recordings of events on our State of Play page here.

Praise for State of Play:

‘Deeply intimate and profoundly intellectual, the letters in State of Play have together kindled a new light for everyone of us who is searching between languages, cultures, and worlds. An essential book.’ —Yan Ge

Reminds us of the global reach of English-language poetry and poetics, whose production is not limited to the predominantly white Anglophone countries of the so-called West.' —Prof. Dorothy Wang

'Draws together a sparky and inspiring array of conversations... I wager that no reader interested in poetry will not find excitement in this vibrant anthology.’ —Prof. Elleke Boehmer

'This anthology offers rare and intimate insights into the creative challenges of writing poetry' —Prof. Susheila Nasta, Founder of Wasafiri

‘Multiple yet singular, the conversations here reveal the complexities of poetic language.' —Prof. Sandeep Parmar

Editors: Eddie Tay & Jennifer Wong

Contributors: Romalyn Ante, Khairani Barokka, Natalie Linh Bolderston, Troy Cabida, Mary Jean Chan, Victoria Chang, Chen Chen, Tim Tim Cheng, Felix Chow, Kit Fan, Jay Gao, Will Harris, Sarah Howe, Antony Huen, Joshua Ip, L Kiew, Laura Jane Lee, Li-Young Lee, Louise Leung, Dong Li, Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Mukahang Limbu, Aaron Maniam, Theresa Muñoz, Alvin Pang, Nina Mingya Powles, Helen Quah, Sean Wai Keung, Lora Supandi, Arthur Sze, Marylyn Tan, Jennifer Lee Tsai, R. A. Villanueva, Jenny Xie, Jinhao Xie, Yanyi, Eric Yip, Monica Youn, and Ethan Yu.

All seven of the titles we published under Wayne Holloway-Smith’s editorship, for a special price of £45:

• Dog Woman by Helen Quah

• Mother of Flip-Flops by Mukahang Limbu

• Apricot by Katie O’Pray

• A Disbelief of Flesh by Maria-Sophia Christodoulou

• Trust Fall by William Gee

• Sad Thing Angry by Emma Jeremy

• G&T by Oakley Flanagan

‘This extraordinary collection of poems is an archeology of shame, discomfort, unease. Quah’s controlled poetic lines hold utmost tension as she explores love, sexuality, desire, and the fraught emotional hinterlands of an orientalised female body.’ — Jason Allen-Paisant

This startlingly original debut delves into the surreal, concealed moments of a young womanhood. Helen Quah’s voice is in part a deep-calling into the complex distances between mother and daughter, in part a twisted venture into the contradictions of romance. Dog Woman, named after the series of artworks by Paula Rego, contorts language, opening up a playfully dark and often humorous space of the fantastical and otherwise unexplained.

‘In these beautiful, uncanny, hot-blooded tableaus Quah offers an ominous symbolism of life as an unresolvable drama, the sound and contrast up a little too loud for safety or comfort. Reading her lines felt like following a corridor to its end only to find a door opening onto a further corridor/door/corridor/door…only these corridors are lives, places, families, feelings; this way Quah has you wandering through your own interior as a voyeur and hostage of your own imagination.’ — Jack Underwood

This startlingly original debut delves into the surreal, concealed moments of a young womanhood. Helen Quah’s voice is in part a deep-calling into the complex distances between mother and daughter, in part a twisted venture into the contradictions of romance. Dog Woman, named after the series of artworks by Paula Rego, contorts language, opening up a playfully dark and often humorous space of the fantastical and otherwise unexplained.

‘This extraordinary collection of poems is an archeology of shame, discomfort, unease. Quah’s controlled poetic lines hold utmost tension as she explores love, sexuality, desire, and the fraught emotional hinterlands of an orientalised female body.’ — Jason Allen-Paisant

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