Poets

I am Madhavan. R from Tamilnadu (India), born in a village named Nedumaram. My life in Singapore was around 6 years. I am an engineering graduate. I got interested in poetry from my school days. Initially, I wrote poems only about love and nature. Later, my experience and what I saw in this world helped me write about other topics. Poetry is my biggest asset. Luckily, I expanded my poems into scripts to make short films. My short film "$alary Day" got good attention in Singapore(available on YouTube), and Painful Path and Agaththee are my other works. Agaththee is expected to screen in Mar 2024.

Empty world - written when I was single. There is no motivation behind it but only loneliness. I was inspired by the famous Tamil poet and philosopher Kaviyasaru.Kannadhasan. All his works are top-notch.

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I am Mizanur Rahaman (Mizan) M.R Mizan from a poor family. All my family members were uneducated, and I am the only one lucky to have gone through college! I studied engineering, but my heart fell in love with poetry and literature! I am a person who is naturally born a very shy type and uncomfortable to get in with people. Of course, I am very kind and easygoing with a person once I get in touch. We can't share most of the feelings in the inner us with the things we feel. Only by writing can we express or release our feelings, meaning I am the one who listens to the inner me as a friend by writing.

"In this city," I actually meant SINGAPORE. 

Very honestly, I felt a pure love for this city because of its weather and the nature of the environment surrounded by the sea. Very clean, well-managed, organized and green, like a garden. I came here to earn money, but I love to be a resident where I can stay with my loved one! After six years of struggling, I couldn't get the expected outcome. I had no one to share my feelings, my desires! I decided to leave the loving city finally. And the poetry was a void feeling to the city.

Windu is from Indonesia. She has been working in Singapore for a decade. 

She loves journaling since a young age. That's how she started to love writing. Now she writes to escape when reality becomes too complex or she writes because it allows her to express herself in a creative way that she couldn't otherwise. A contributor to an anthology poetry book; Call & Response 1. She has published a few other anthology books in Bahasa Indonesia. She is now volunteering at IFN (Indonesian Family Network) on her day off.

"There's Hope" is a poem that I wrote in 2017. It was a Labour Day when everyone was supposed to have a rest day I saw a group of migrant brothers sleeping under a shady tree near the construction site. They wore uniforms, I suppose it was a working day for them. I feel sorry for them and lucky at the same time because I got to enjoy a rest day on Labour Day as it should be. While walking I took out my cell phone spontaneously and started typing;  There's Hope.

"Menik Sri Suyati known as Meikhan Sri Bandar from Bandar Batang, Jawa Tengah / Central Java, Indonesia. Founder Of MSB "Membangun Semangat Berkarya/Berkreasi" (Build a Spirit of Working / Creative)

Since 2012, I have been writing anthologies, poems, and short stories, including publishing in several books. I wrote a  novel, Benang, Benang Kehidupan (The Threads of Life), published in 2013. I started writing from a Facebook writing competition by BMI, an Indonesian migrant worker, about love in 2012, published in the book Cinta Segala Rasa (All About Feeling of Love). After which, Anung invited me to write a novelette together. I won the Nucleus Poetry Competition 2017. I was a Migrant Poetry Finalist in 2016, 2017 and 2018. I also contributed to the first Call and Response anthology in 2018.

"My inspiration for Morning of Ornate Rainfall is about rain in the morning. The heavy rain and the water dripping on the roof sounded like percussion music. It was so cool, and the sounds of the wind blowing made me sleepy and lazy to get up. But morning is coming, and I must get up. I have a duty, and I am still alive. Thanks to god, I can wake up from my sleep.

Mohiuddin was born in Comilla, Bangladesh. He came to Singapore in 2012 to work as a construction worker. His poems were shortlisted in the Migrant Workers Poetry Competition Singapore in 2014. His poems have also appeared in various journals and anthologies in Singapore. He loves to write and read.

Zakir Hossain Khokan is a writer, poet, freelance journalist and photographer. Born in Dhaka and a graduate of the National University of Bangladesh, he moved to Singapore in 2003 to work here. Presently he is a quality control project coordinator in the construction sector. His poetry collection, Most beloved Heat and The river reaches the town, a non-fiction book entitled Singapore riots and a love story, and a song album named Emigrant Life have been published in Bangladesh and Singapore. He was also known for his journalism and poetry in Bangladesh. Recently, he served as an editor of "Migrant Tales", an anthology of poems by migrant Bengali poets in Singapore.

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Zakir's poems are extremely well- received in Singapore, having won the first prize for two consecutive years at the Migrant Workers Poetry Competition in both 2014 and 2015.

Since then, he has been a prominent figure representing the migrant worker community in Singapore. His poems, articles and interviews have appeared in journals and anthologies in Singapore, Bangladesh, UK, Belgium, Taiwan and throughout the international media. In 2015, he spoke at TED Singapore, and gave the audience a glimpse of the migrant worker's life through the lens of his poetry, photography, books, and other literary activities. He is currently working to encourage migrant workers to read more books, as well as using literature and the arts to establish a bond between migrant and Singaporean writers.

Hou Wei is from Nanchang, China. He came to Singapore in 2011 and works at a logistics company. He writes during his free time and favours Chinese classical poems, especially eight-line poems. His favourite writers include Li Bai, Du Fu, Bai Juyi, and he loves "Romance in the Kingdoms" and "Three Hundred Poems from the Tang Dynasty". His hobbies include watching movies, reading, playing basketball and travelling. He has also been shortlisted several times for the Migrant Poetry Competition in Singapore.

Mahbub Hasan Dipu was born in Shaver, Bangladesh. He came to Singapore in 2008 and is currently working as a supervisor in construction. Dipu likes the arts, literature travelling and writing. He writes poems rhymes short stories, songs and articles. He loves to explore themes such as love, life and social issues through his work. He contrinuted to the poetry anthology Migrant Tales and performed Zebra Crossing, a spoken word poetry performance at the Esplanade. 

I first came to Singapore in 2006 until early 2012, then again in early 2013 until now. Basically, I just love to write randomly on my social media. I write about migrant workers sometimes, about anything that I see, I hear and I read. It is also about my feelings. (It's all self-taught)

When it comes to my feelings, my writing turned out to be poetic, and I realized that I don't play the narrative there. I have a blog which basically writes stories about Indonesian migrant workers.

About the poem "Am I Wrong" - it's based on a story given to me, which I felt connected to at that moment. I have been dedicating my time, my mind and my energy to do something I love passionately for many years. But circumstances forced me and pushed me into a corner, not even giving me time to think about what was going on.

I am likely not given a choice. But then I know, that I have to leave.

Currently, I am with my fellow domestic workers in a community. I also study at the Open University to pursue my law degree, despite my age which is not young anymore. I am studying at the same time as my daughter, and we wish that we could graduate at the same time / same year, though we are in different universities. I study not for a job purpose, but to gain more knowledge and to keep my brain working and stay positive.

In a very recent time, I was also part of a volunteer trainer for a financial literacy class for Indonesian domestic workers, run by the Indonesian embassy.

I'm Rea Maac from Marinduque, Philippines. I've been working in Singapore as a domestic worker since 2010. I love reading during my free time as well as writing stories and poems.

I started writing during high school, I am part of our school gazette specifically literary column. It was in 2016 when I heard of the Migrant Poetry Competition in Singapore, I joined the competition and my poem was shortlisted. After the competition, I attended various writing workshops(poetry and short stories) in Sing Lit Station.

I wrote "Scarecrow" way back in 2010 when I first arrived in Singapore. It was during my first day off after 6 months, I went to Jurong Point to send money to my family but I didn't know that work permit is a must-have if we send money back home. My WP was kept by my employer at that time. I asked for help but no one helped me. I was standing somewhere in Jurong Point watching different people come and go doing their own thing. That's when I thought of being a Scarecrow in the middle of the crowd.

Zhang Haitao us from Shanxi province, China. He currently does technical work at HP in Singapore. Writing poems is his bobby. He loves Chinese classical literature and is very interested in poems though he has not read a lot of them. He has tried to write poems on various themes and using different forms. The poems chosen were originally published in his work entitled Collection of poems in SG. 

MD Sharif Uddin was born on 5 September 1978 in Dilalpur village, Nandail, Mymensingh, Bangladesh to MD Dulal Bhuiyan and Renu Ara Begum. He has a Diploma in Ceramic Technology.

He arrived in Singapore in 2008 where he works in the construction and tunneling sectors as a supervisor. Sharif writes short stories and poetry and his works have been published in journals and anthologies in Singapore and Bangladesh. He was a finalist in the Singapore Migrant Workers Poetry Competition 2014 and 2018, and also a finalist in the Singapore Migrant Workers Short Story Competition 2018.

The poem “Immortal” was written around 2016. After being in Singapore for a long time, I often wonder how I will be remembered by the city, if I return home one day. When that happens, even though I am not physically in Singapore anymore, I realised that the city cannot forget me.

"My touch is everywhere in the city: in the buildings I built, in the walkways I passed, in the lights that once shone on me. Maybe my tears will be forgotten, but when the tears flow into the river, the waves will not forget me. Maybe when city will be richer and more beautiful, but this would not have happened without me. So in a way, I am immortal, as my spirit lives forever in the city’s urban fabric.

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