Unmarked Treasure Explained

Unmarked Treasure
Author:Cyril Wong
Country:Singapore
Language:English
Publisher:Firstfruits Publications and Math Paper Press
Pub Date:2004 and 2012
Pages:111
Isbn:978-981-05-0408-3

Unmarked Treasure is a poetry collection by the Singaporean poet Cyril Wong, held together by memories about family life and intimate relationships, charged with intense emotions surrounding love, death and exploration of an emptiness within the self.

This book marks the first time that an openly gay poet[1] has won both the National Young Artist Award for Literature[2] and the Singapore Literature Prize.[3] As commented on by the poet/playwright Robert Yeo, the book contains "poems about parental displeasure and homosexual relations" but the work also allows the author "to deliberately blur distinctions between the real (Cyril Wong) and the persona (the poet who 'wonders at his own existence'.) The result is a distancing that layers the poems and renders them more fraught and complex and encourages, indeed demands, repeated reading."[4]

See also

Notes and References

  1. http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1688895,00.html TIME magazine website
  2. https://www.nac.gov.sg/singaporeartsscene/youngArtistAward/overview.html National Arts Council
  3. http://bookcouncil.sg/awards/detail/singapore-literature-prize#shortlist2006 National Book Development Council of Singapore
  4. http://www.qlrs.com/critique.asp?id=84 Quarterly Literary Review Singapore