City of Rain

“One of Singapore’s most visible poets, Pang grows with each book. In his poems we hear a voice unhurried, confident, and capable of carrying diverse humors, and read a rhetoric shaded to ironies, surprising us with glimpses of contemporary experience that affirm yet mock, celebrate and unsettle. His poetry adds a rich and complex presence to the critical mass of urban literature now fully emergent from Singapore. His poems, at once recognizably national and international in reach, offer a fresh edgy energy to this tradition.”
—Professor Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Winner of the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, 1992 and author of Joss and Gold

“With City of Rain, Alvin has undoubtedly filled the shoes of Billy Collins for the Singaporean literary scene. Rooted enthusiastically in our local, urban context, Alvin outdoes even the American Poet Laureate himself in terms of the flashiness of his imagery and the sheer range of ideas skillfully displayed in so many of his poems.”
—Cyril Wong, author of Let Me Tell You Something About That Night and The Dictator’s Eyebrow, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore