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ALLTHETIME folios present three poets across the generations in conversation with one another. This time, the words of bani haykal, David Wong Hsieng Ming and Izyanti Asa’ari braid together the grievances–quiet and loud–that colour the days of our increasingly estranged lives.

blood/work brings together three poets whose voices intertwine across themes of endurance, immanent pain, and the body’s remembering. Moving between confession and collaboration, the collection traces how blood—as kinship, sacrifice, and persistence—binds us to histories both chosen and imposed.

Each poet writes into the work of living: the physical, the emotional, and the collective labour of becoming. In dialogue, their poems blur boundaries of voice and authorship, building a shared anatomy of care and survival. blood/work asks what is passed through us, what we carry, and how writing might transform what wounds into what endures.
“What makes us human? What does life even mean? What do we even do with our time here? blood/work offers poems as exposed nerve, gathered from the edge of death, grief and righteous fury.”
—Diana Rahim
bani haykal (b. 1985), as an artist and musician,revolves around human-machine relationships / intimacies, examining and reflecting on how tools and technologies have shaped and continue to shape our experiences from commuting to communicating, navigating places and people.

His music and spoken word have been performed, recorded and collected into ten albums to date. Manifestations of his research culminate into works of various forms including site-responsive installations, poetry and performance. In his capacity as a collaborator and a soloist, bani has participated in festivals including Other Futures (Netherlands), MeCA Festival (Japan), Wiener Festwochen (Vienna), Media/Art Kitchen (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Japan) and Liquid Architecture (Australia / Singapore) among others.

David Wong Hsien Ming (b. 1988) discovered poetry as a child while at a Sunday lunch. His work explores the dualities, contradictions and absurdities of being, and has appeared on platforms like PR&TA, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore and Mascara Literary Review. His first collection, For the End Comes Reaching, (2015) is a meditation on the loss that accompanies each having.

Izyanti Asa’ari (b. 1988) is a writer and co-founder of Fellow Design. Her works have appeared in anthologies such as This is Not a Safety Barrier (Ethos Books, 2016), to let the light in (Sing Lit Station, 2021), New Singapore Poetries (Gaudy Boy, 2022) and The Opening Act (Layl Ash-Shayr, 2024).

Her practice explores how narratives and environments shape our inner lives—probing the gestures the body makes, willingly or otherwise, in response to place, memory and myth. blood/work is her debut in print.

Authors

blood/work: ALLTHETIME 02