No cheap shorts
Local writers are publishing shorter works instead of full-length books, some of them homemade
By Akshita Nanda
The future of Singapore literature may well be short and sweet.
Rather than bring out full-length books of poetry and prose, writers and local publishers are now publishing more new work in chapbooks of 40 to 60 pages.
The length of a typical chapter - hence the name - chapbooks have traditionally been the 'singles' of the literary world, a quick and cheap way for poets and writers to bring out short new works or give teasers of longer books. Many are clearly homemade, hand-bound and stapled, such as comics artist Troy Chin's prose collection Trinkets From Another Life, which he self-published in October last year and sells for $4 each at local bookstores.
Local publishers, however, are now printing chapbooks as professionally designed and printed volumes that are complete in themselves and do not herald longer works. These chapbooks cost between $1.50 and $6 to print and distribute and are sold at between $10 and $18 each, compared with $20 to $30 for a full-length book.
At least 15 chapbooks of prose and poetry, designed and printed professionally, have been brought out over the past year by publishers Math Paper Press, Landmark Books and Ethos Books.
Math Paper Press, run by indie bookstore Books Actually co-founder Kenny Leck, leads the way with 10 volumes from established and new Singapore writers under the Babette's Feast series. The volumes cost $10 each, range from 48 to 100 pages and are usually sourced from writers who attend regular literary sessions at the bookshop in Tiong Bahru. About 1,000 copies were printed of each chapbook.
The idea is to raise awareness of Singapore literature by releasing new titles regularly, says Mr Leck, 33, who is launching another eight chapbooks this year.
'People think that there is no demand for local fiction. But there has to be impact. There has to be a certain amount of titles coming out for people to take notice,' he says.
Publishers Fong Hoe Fang of Ethos Books and Goh Eck Kheng of Landmark Books are also bringing chapbooks out for this same reason: if their writers do not yet have a book in them, they certainly have enough for a chapbook.
Ethos Books published a chapbook of poetry by Kirpal Singh last March, titled Shar(e)d Humanity, and another, Ajar, by writer Grace Chia in October.
Mr Fong, 58, says: 'Dr Singh, who is one of the earlier writers in Singapore, has been writing off and on, but his schedule has been very busy and a full collection of his poetry would take some time. So we thought that a chapbook for him would be useful.' He printed about 100 copies that were given to the writer to distribute and sell at literary events.
Ajar, however, was a free teaser for Chia's new collection, which will be published in June this year. Her last collection Womango was published in 1998, so Mr Fong thought a chapbook was necessary to 'reintroduce her' to readers. He printed 50 copies, all of which have been given away.
Mr Goh of Landmark Books published three chapbooks of poetry in October last year, two from established poet Heng Siok Tian and one fromwriter Angeline Yap. Each is fewer than 50 pages long.
'The important thing is to focus on quality instead of quantity. I would rather have them publish fewer poems of a higher quality than the other way around,' says Mr Goh, 57.
Heng's 28-page Is My Body A Myth retails at $14.98 and the 48-page Mixing Tongues at $17.12. Yap's 48-page Closing My Eyes To Listen costs $17.12.
Mr Goh says the prices are justified, as the books are about the same length as other volumes of poetry he has published. He does not think lowering prices will win new customers.
'You either want these volumes or you don't. We are addressing a market that wants Singapore poetry,' he says.
He is confident that there will be demand and has printed about 800 copies of each title.
While he could not supply sales figures yet, readers seem to be willing to buy the $10 volumes from Math Paper Press: Christine Chia's family psychodrama, The Law Of Second Marriages, has sold over 500 copies since it was printed last year, while writer Alvin Pang's $10 compilation of fiction What Gives Us Our Names has sold 300 copies in the same time.
Pang, 40, was a firm believer in chapbooks long before Math Paper Press published his work. In 2002, he paid a local publisher to print a short collection of his poems, Other Things. Over the last decade, he gave away or sold those 1,000 copies at literary gatherings here and overseas, and for up to $10 each. 'People are more willing to pay $10 for a chapbook than $20 for a collection,' he says.
He will publish at least three more chapbooks before considering anything longer. 'It may take five years to do a book but in between, you have enough material that your audience is willing to pay for,' he says.
'I have at least three chapbooks worth of work done. They don't belong together in the same book but as three chapbooks, they would be pretty coherent.'
akshitan@sph.com.sg
All titles mentioned in this article are available at Books Kinokuniya and Books Actually.
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Grammar with Lubna: The trace of trays ... and other such oddities of English
I visited Ikea a little while ago, and saw a lovely sign, “Put away your trays and leave no trace’. Why did I think this sign lovely?
Well, it started when a friend of mine told me a funny story about what happened to him. B is an engineer, always conscious, and telling me that his English is not great, but he’s actually a wonderful communicator in so many other ways. He was in the US, as he always is, and was with his American colleague when he decided to boast that even though his English wasn’t great, at least he was bilingual and could speak Mandarin. So his American friend asked him, “How do you say ‘rice’ in Chinese”? B then replied, “Which ‘rice’?” At this point, I expected B to then talk about the difference between cooked and uncooked rice, or something to that effect ..., but instead, he went on to add, “Do you mean (and he spelt out the following two words) R-I-C-E or R-I-S-E?”
At this point, some of you are laughing because it’s funny, and some of you are going ‘huh?’ because you would have asked the same thing. Your reaction depends on whether or not you say ‘rice’ in the same way you say ‘rise’. B’s American friend says them differently, as would most American and British English speakers. ‘Rice’ has an ‘s’ sound at the end, while ‘rise’ has a ‘z’ sound at the end. Many Singaporeans say these two words in the same way, with an ‘s’ sound at the end. The same goes with ‘trace’ and ‘trays’: ‘trace’ has an ‘s’ sound at the end, while ‘trays’ has a z sound at the end in American English as well as British English.
So, I began with some phonetics, and you’re now wondering what this has to do with grammar? Well, actually it’s got a lot to do with grammar – specifically, about the pronunciation of suffixes on plural noun forms (e.g. ‘pens’, ‘books’, ‘shoes’), third person singular verb forms (e.g. ‘sits’, ‘sings’, ‘jumps’). Not many people realise that the same suffix can and should be pronounced in different ways, and that they are not always said the way they are spelt. So, ‘trays’, for example, although spelt with the plural ‘s’ suffix, is pronounced with a final z sound. (Just a note to say that I’m not going to use phonetic symbols such as those in the IPA as everyone may not be able to read such phonetic symbols.]
The difference in how these different suffixes are pronounced depends on what kind of sounds these words end in. When the word ends in voiceless sounds, i.e. sounds where your vocal cords don’t vibrate, such as the p, t, f, and k sounds, we say an s sound for the plural or singular third person suffix. In contrast, when the word ends in voiced sounds, i.e. sounds where your vocal cords vibrate, such as the vowel and b, d, v, g, m, n, ng sounds and, we say a z sound for the plural or singular third person suffix.
So we say ‘beats’ as it is spelt, i.e. beats; just as we do for ‘picks’, ‘puffs’, ‘hops’ where the suffix is pronounced as s. However, say. Similarly for all words ending with voiced sounds, we say z for the suffix, we say beadz for ‘beads’, harmz for ‘harms’, singz for ‘sings’, trayz for ‘trays’, blurbz for ‘blurbs’, and leavez for ‘leaves’ but we say leafs for ‘leafs’, soaks for ‘soaks’ and shops for ‘shops’. And of course, when the word ends in a s, z or similar sounds like sh, ch or dge (as in ‘judge’), we can’t just put a s or z sound for the plural or third person singular. Instead, we put an ‘es’, which, if you haven’t already guessed, is pronounced as iz. So we say horsiz for ‘horses’, hatchiz for hatches, and judgiz for ‘judges’
This same voicing rule – where suffixes must match the voicing feature of the sound that it follows – also applies to the past tense morpheme. So even though we spell the regular past tense with ‘ed’, we don’t say it the same way. So, it’s ropt for ‘roped, but we say robd for ‘robed’. Here the difference is between the final voiceless p sound at the end of the word ‘rope’ and the final voiced b sound at the end of ‘robe’. Similarly it’s sackt for ‘sacked’ and saggt for ‘sagged’; and platid for ‘plated’.
Posted by Lubna Alsagoff on December 16, 2011 at 2:41am
Well, it started when a friend of mine told me a funny story about what happened to him. B is an engineer, always conscious, and telling me that his English is not great, but he’s actually a wonderful communicator in so many other ways. He was in the US, as he always is, and was with his American colleague when he decided to boast that even though his English wasn’t great, at least he was bilingual and could speak Mandarin. So his American friend asked him, “How do you say ‘rice’ in Chinese”? B then replied, “Which ‘rice’?” At this point, I expected B to then talk about the difference between cooked and uncooked rice, or something to that effect ..., but instead, he went on to add, “Do you mean (and he spelt out the following two words) R-I-C-E or R-I-S-E?”
At this point, some of you are laughing because it’s funny, and some of you are going ‘huh?’ because you would have asked the same thing. Your reaction depends on whether or not you say ‘rice’ in the same way you say ‘rise’. B’s American friend says them differently, as would most American and British English speakers. ‘Rice’ has an ‘s’ sound at the end, while ‘rise’ has a ‘z’ sound at the end. Many Singaporeans say these two words in the same way, with an ‘s’ sound at the end. The same goes with ‘trace’ and ‘trays’: ‘trace’ has an ‘s’ sound at the end, while ‘trays’ has a z sound at the end in American English as well as British English.
So, I began with some phonetics, and you’re now wondering what this has to do with grammar? Well, actually it’s got a lot to do with grammar – specifically, about the pronunciation of suffixes on plural noun forms (e.g. ‘pens’, ‘books’, ‘shoes’), third person singular verb forms (e.g. ‘sits’, ‘sings’, ‘jumps’). Not many people realise that the same suffix can and should be pronounced in different ways, and that they are not always said the way they are spelt. So, ‘trays’, for example, although spelt with the plural ‘s’ suffix, is pronounced with a final z sound. (Just a note to say that I’m not going to use phonetic symbols such as those in the IPA as everyone may not be able to read such phonetic symbols.]
The difference in how these different suffixes are pronounced depends on what kind of sounds these words end in. When the word ends in voiceless sounds, i.e. sounds where your vocal cords don’t vibrate, such as the p, t, f, and k sounds, we say an s sound for the plural or singular third person suffix. In contrast, when the word ends in voiced sounds, i.e. sounds where your vocal cords vibrate, such as the vowel and b, d, v, g, m, n, ng sounds and, we say a z sound for the plural or singular third person suffix.
So we say ‘beats’ as it is spelt, i.e. beats; just as we do for ‘picks’, ‘puffs’, ‘hops’ where the suffix is pronounced as s. However, say. Similarly for all words ending with voiced sounds, we say z for the suffix, we say beadz for ‘beads’, harmz for ‘harms’, singz for ‘sings’, trayz for ‘trays’, blurbz for ‘blurbs’, and leavez for ‘leaves’ but we say leafs for ‘leafs’, soaks for ‘soaks’ and shops for ‘shops’. And of course, when the word ends in a s, z or similar sounds like sh, ch or dge (as in ‘judge’), we can’t just put a s or z sound for the plural or third person singular. Instead, we put an ‘es’, which, if you haven’t already guessed, is pronounced as iz. So we say horsiz for ‘horses’, hatchiz for hatches, and judgiz for ‘judges’
This same voicing rule – where suffixes must match the voicing feature of the sound that it follows – also applies to the past tense morpheme. So even though we spell the regular past tense with ‘ed’, we don’t say it the same way. So, it’s ropt for ‘roped, but we say robd for ‘robed’. Here the difference is between the final voiceless p sound at the end of the word ‘rope’ and the final voiced b sound at the end of ‘robe’. Similarly it’s sackt for ‘sacked’ and saggt for ‘sagged’; and platid for ‘plated’.
Posted by Lubna Alsagoff on December 16, 2011 at 2:41am
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