WE ARE A WEBSITE
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  • Issue 9: Brilliant/Buckets 2018
    • Editors’ Note
    • Natalie Cheung
    • Holly Day
    • Margaret Devadason
    • John Grey
    • James Croal Jackson
    • Brian Khoo
    • Edward Koay
    • John Lee
    • Koshika Sandrasagra
    • Ian C Smith
    • Shilpa Dikshit Thapliyal
    • Thao Nhi Do
    • ​Samuel Caleb Wee (prose)
    • Samuel Caleb Wee (poetry)
  • 8.3: "Un-gendering Home" Special
    • Editor's Note
    • Vicky Chong
    • Elizabeth Hepzibah Goh
    • Michelle Chua
    • Surinder Kaur
    • Pallavi Narayan
    • Clara Mok
    • Priyanka Srivastava
    • Vanessa Yeo
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    • Issue 1: Scorching/Sweltering 2015 >
      • Editors' Note
      • Ang Ming Wei
      • Rodrigo Dela Peña, Jr. + Jau Goh
      • Sebastian Ernst
      • Jau Goh
      • Tse Hao Guang
      • Krystle Huan
      • Helen Palmer
      • Euginia Tan
    • Issue 2: Hazy/Humid 2015 >
      • Editors' Note
      • Troy Cabida
      • Charmaine Chan
      • Deborah Chow
      • Brendan Goh + Tan Hai Han
      • Tammy Ho Lai-Ming
      • Fiona Kain
      • Lina Lee
      • H Ng
      • Tan Xiang Yeow
    • Issue 3: Pouring/Parching 2016 >
      • Editors' Note
      • Bisuketto Studio/Charmian Ong
      • Alton Melvar M Dapanas
      • Benedicta J. Foo
      • Matthew James Friday
      • Elizabeth Gan
      • Riyoo Kim
      • Mulyana
      • Jeremy Richey
      • Shaista Tayabali
      • Andrew Yuen
    • Issue 4: Thunder/Tempest 2016 >
      • Editor's Note
      • Steph Dogfoot
      • Sandys Hocombe + Rene Daigle (Beagles Comics)
      • Lydia Lam
      • See Wern Hao
      • Ruth Tang
      • Hazel Wu
      • Nancy Zhang
      • Wong Wen Pu
    • Issue 5: Muggy/Monsoon 2016 >
      • Editors' Note
      • Sandra Arnold
      • Jennifer Anne Champion
      • Alex Chow
      • Lawdenmarc Decamora
      • Eun Go
      • Goh Li Sian
      • Sean Francis Han
      • Eileen Lian
      • Ros Lin
      • Ng Yuan Siang
      • Yurina Rahmanisa
      • G David Schwartz
      • Lia Varbanova
    • Issue 6: Searing/Sticky 2017 >
      • Editors' Note
      • Michaela Anchan
      • Paul Beckman
      • Deborah Chow
      • Jacqueline Goh
      • Trivia Goh
      • Gerline Lim
      • Max Pasakorn
      • Dan Tan
      • Verena Tay
      • Judith Tse
      • David Wong Hsien Ming
      • Nicole Yeo
    • 6.5: Special Issue >
      • My Mother's Menagerie
      • Bagdogra Airport
      • Invisible
      • Matter, Mostly Dark Matter, and the Rest is Energy
    • Issue 7: Tropical/Torrid >
      • Editors' Note
      • Daniel de Culla
      • Matthew James Friday
      • Iman Fahim Hameed
      • Joshua Ip
      • David Koo
      • Iris N. Schwartz
      • Adeline Tan (Mightyellow)
      • Athena Tan
      • Buz Walker-Teach
      • Ryan Thorpe
    • 7.5: Election Issue >
      • Editors' Note
      • Gary Beck
      • Sarah Bigham
      • Celia Hauw
      • Chris Rodriguez
      • Helen Lee Tart
      • Jonathan Yip
    • Issue 8: Stormy/Sodden 2017 >
      • Editors' Note
      • Nolcha Fox
      • Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois
      • Kyle Hemmings
      • Marcus Ong
      • Rodrigo Dela Peña, Jr.
      • Ian C Smith
      • Jim Zola

Editors' Note


Welcome to the inaugural issue of We Are A Website.

Named for the seasons (or lack thereof) in Singapore, this issue features poems which get better with each re-reading, and art we will never tire of looking at. An urban sensibility informs the works we have fallen for and picked. Hao Guang Tse's "Glass Elevator", with its parentheses within parentheses, is a dizzying feat; dinging in our hearts like the love song of an office serf. Ang Ming Wei's verse triptych, "Heart Soul Body", rewrites the landscape as body (or is it the other way around?), etched by loneliness and longing.

Rodrigo V. Dela Peña Jr.'s "In Case of Emergency" serves up the poignant paranoia of daily living three ways, playing with form to evoke and cycle through anxiety, action, obsession and reflection. In his lines, we are transported, one foot hovering before we step off the curb, in the wake of the crying ambulance - disaster averted - elated and guilty to be alive. Jau Goh's hypnotic geometric drawings jive with and offer calming counterweight to this suite of poems. Both poet and painter traffic in different angles.

Elsewhere, Goh's acrylic paintings find serenity in simplicity - conjuring up mysterious depths, and golden stupas nestled in mist-shrouded mountains.

Meanwhile, Krystle Huan's illustrations make us smile with their wit. They stand boldly alone here, like the cheese in the dell.

Memory (the grasping at, the preservation of) is another theme that runs through this first offering from us. Sebastian Ernst's architectural research project straddle art and analysis. His photographs of Singapore's old podium-tower blocks - blocky, stackable - are themselves rigorous and modular, underscoring the same-ness conceived as utopia by pioneer planners. Helen Palmer's poems are rich in the colours and flavours of childhood or young love, whole lives spooling out or tumbling forth, turning upon the words "years later".

Last but not least, Euginia Tan's pieces (taken from her third poetry collection, to be published by Ethos Books in 2016) are a family of fragments - a portrait of a marriage in shards, in a daughter's imagination; an archivist archived in the beholder's mind; a museum measured in unmeasurables.

We hope you enjoy this issue as much as we enjoyed putting it together. We thank all who submitted their work to us. Most of all, we thank our contributors for trusting us with their words and art.


Eva Aldea, Clara Chow, Christine Lee and Yen Yen Wu
We Are A Website editors
Singapore
June 2015

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