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Book Cover for: Inspector Inspector, Jee Leong Koh

Inspector Inspector

Jee Leong Koh

Shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize 2024. Jee Leong Koh writes out of the heart of a contemporary reality most readers are familiar with at second or third hand. He writes of political exile and spiritual homelessness; he understands the perils of war, and the perils of certain kinds of peace. Inspector Inspector is his second Carcanet book (Steep Tea was published in 2015 and chosen as a Best Book of the Year in the Financial Times), and it develops his earlier themes with authority, passion and a sense of possible justice. Steep Tea dialogued with women poets from across the world; Inspector Inspector struggles with the legacies of fathers, personal, poetic and political. Threaded through the erotic poems and poems based on interviews with fellow Singaporeans living in America are thirteen palinodes in the voice of the speaker's dead father, which he answers when the father's voice falls silent. Jee Leong Koh's is an inclusive, generous and forgiving imagination, with an enviable mastery of traditional and experimental forms.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Carcanet Press
  • Publish Date: Oct 27th, 2022
  • Pages: 88
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.10in - 5.40in - 0.40in - 0.25lb
  • EAN: 9781800172227
  • Categories: American - Asian American & Pacific IslanderLGBTQ+

About the Author

Jee Leong Koh is the author of Steep Tea (Carcanet), named a Best Book of the Year by the Financial Times and a Finalist by Lambda Literary in the United States. He has published four other books of poems, a volume of essays, a collection of zuihitsu, and a hybrid work of fiction titled Snow at 5 PM: Translations of an Insignificant Japanese Poet. Inspector Inspector is his second Carcanet book. Born and raised in Singapore, educated in England, Koh lives in New York City, where he heads the literary non-profit Singapore Unbound.

More books by Jee Leong Koh

Book Cover for: Sample and Loop: A Simple History of Singaporeans in America, Jee Leong Koh
Book Cover for: The Pillow Book: English-Japanese Illustrated Edition マクラノソウシ(日本&, Jee Leong Koh
Book Cover for: Payday Loans: Poems, Jee Leong Koh
Book Cover for: Seven Studies for a Self Portrait, Jee Leong Koh
Book Cover for: Snow at 5 PM: Translations of an Insignificant Japanese Poet, Jee Leong Koh
Book Cover for: Equal to the Earth, Jee Leong Koh
Book Cover for: Steep Tea, Jee Leong Koh
Book Cover for: Connor & Seal, Jee Leong Koh

Praise for this book

'This is a robust, assured collection from a mature poet with a sound grasp of traditional poetic form - and, crucially, a willingness to experiment with it.' Toh Wen Li, The Straits Times
'The phrases in Inspector Inspector, themselves all carefully chosen, do not reduce to one refrain, but they do reinforce certain thematic concerns, most prominently the will that applies to all the persons in the book (father, son, lovers, Singaporeans...), and into which I take the reader to be invited: let us remain alive to one another.' H.L. Hix, Stride Magazine