With increased global mobility of people, the phrase “go home” has been commonly used against those who are deemed as not belonging and infringing on native space. However, “go home” may not be as simple as returning to where one originates from. In a world where countries have become globalised but continue to take protectionist stances that focus on raising borders, restricting citizenship and denying access to asylum seekers, the notion of “home” has been destabilised. Now, more than ever, it is important to break the illusion of barriers and to acknowledge the network of routes that have brought us to where we are.
To Gather Your Leaving navigates our troubled world through poetry, responding to questions of belonging, access, journeys and mobility.
Boey Kim Cheng is a multi-award-winning Singapore-born poet, and a 1996 recipient of the National Arts Council’s Young Artist Award. He emigrated to Australia in 1997, but returned in 2013 as one of Nanyang Technological University's writers-in-residence; he is currently Associate Professor in the NTU Division of English. He co-founded Mascara Literary Review in 2007, the first Australian literary journal to promote Asian Australian writing, and in 2013 co-edited the groundbreaking anthology Contemporary Asian Australian Poets. Boey has published five collections of poetry, including Clear Brightness (selected by The Straits Times as one of the Best Books of 2012), as well as Between Stations, a celebrated travel memoir reissued by Epigram Books in 2017. His writing is frequently studied in tertiary and university institutions in Singapore and abroad. Gull Between Heaven and Earth is his first novel.
Arin Alycia Fong is a graduate student of Creative Writing at Nanyang Technological University. Her poetry, short fiction, and criticism appears in Quarterly Literary Review Singapore; this is how you walk on the moon; In This Desert, There Were Seeds; Seven Hundred Lines: A Crown of Found/Font Sonnets; and Jacket2.
Justin Chia is a poetry editor at Ethos Books. Prior to joining the publishing world, he studied Communications at Temasek Polytechnic.
