POETRY FOR THE MASSES
by David Chew in Today, Oct 14, 2004
Cyril Wong’s new online journal aims to introduce local bards to the worldLOCAL poet Cyril Wong has started a new online poetry journal and he hopes the journal christened softblow will soon make its presence felt internationally.
Borne out of a passion to feature local writing that could be placed side by side with great international works one day, the idea – which had been at the back of Wong’s mind for a long time – only came alive this year.
Currently, there are several literary online journals, as well as other platforms, for local writers to showcase their works.
There’s the Quarterly Literary Review Singapore (www.qlrs.com), the Poetry Billboard (www.poetrybillboard.com), The 2nd Rule (www.the2ndrule.com), The Writer Pages (www.thewritepages.com) and an information site called Literary Singapore (www.writer.per.sg).
The people behind softblow want it to be more than a literary site hosting work by award-winning and emerging poets; they want it to put the focus on the work itself.
"I felt that there wasn’t enough focus on poetry in the online literary journals available now. And besides, at the moment, Singapore doesn’t have an online poetry journal that can claim to have international recognition," said Wong.
"People here really just gets published in the strangest of places!"
Deciding what will feature on softblow are a panel of three editors: Wong, Chris Ong, a long time friend of Wong’s who has edited his work right from the beginning, and Jason Wee – another local poet who was one of the recipients of the Shell-NAC scholarship this year.
"It’s not Singapore Idol! It’s not a popularity contest, please," laughed Wong.
Calling for submissions on international and local poetry mailing lists, Wong said he received 10 submissions on the first day of the website going public.
Thus far, a total of 30 submissions have been received.
Noting that burn-out and a lack of commitment have led to the downfall of many other such pursuits, both Wong and Ong say that theirs is easy to maintain and the main work has been done already.
"Since the website has been set up already, all we need to do now it to put up the poems. We will be fine as along as people keep submitting the poems."
They are currently in talks to involve student work from a local junior college.