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Praise
About the Author

Shortlisted for the 2018 Singapore Literature Prize (English Poetry)

…At the very start of us, I foresaw every possible ending.

Professions is a poet’s directory of heartbreak. The backbone of this collection is a cycle of fractured relationships, where professional preoccupations tear lovers apart as distrust and incomprehension brew. Set against this are glimpses of indestructible intimacy—between a mother, a granddaughter, and a friend.

Shortlisted for the 2018 Singapore Literature Prize, Amanda Chong’s poems observe the doomed practice of the heart: solitary experiences, never fully nor mutually understood until too late.
“Chong’s language plays off the sublime against the quotidian, presenting a psychedelic, kaleidoscopic vision of frolicking cells illuminated by the speaker’s own imagination.”
—Cha: An Asian Literary Journal

“In her poems, Chong captures the brutality of emotions through her imagery, but also writes about the potent moments in her life with clarity that is to be envied.”
—ReadNUS

“Amanda Chong’s remarkable poems range from tender to the exuberant. Steadfast, thoughtful and powerfully feminine, her lyrical voice couldn’t arrive at a more opportune time, when glass ceilings are still in the midst of shattering, and the country’s poetry is teeming with diverse passions and insights into previously unacknowledged histories.”
—Cyril Wong

“Amanda Chong’s images are flecks of precise sunlight filtered through the curtains of a meticulous mind. These poems are modern female musings. Soft and sharp, longing and restrained all at once.”
—Pooja Nansi
Amanda Chong is a lawyer trained in Cambridge and Harvard, who writes when she should be sleeping. Her poetry has been engraved on the Marina Bay Helix Bridge and included in the Cambridge International GCSE Syllabus.

Her first collection of poems, Professions (2016), was shortlisted for the 2018 Singapore Literature Prize. Her plays include the one woman show Psychobitch (Wild Rice, 2023), which played to sold out audiences in an extended run; the musical The Feelings Farm (Esplanade, 2021, 2024); and the award-winning #WomenSupportingWomen (T:>Works, 2022), which was also staged in Cambridge, UK.

More about Amanda: http://www.amandachong.com.

Authors

Professions