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Review in Gulf Islande Phunnies
One of the benefits of Canada's more open immigration policy is the arrival on our shores of some of the world's best writers. One of Singapore's greatest poets has been living in Vancouver for some time now and has earned the respect and reverence of a new audience. The launch of his first book, in a small theatre within Havana restaurant, was packed - standing room only. This month at the Chapters in Richmond, there wasn't a cold seat in the house; he sold more books than the Dim Sum cook who'd been there earlier that month.
Doctor Goh Poh Seng radiates peace - he looks like an Asian Boris Pasternak! His new book As Though The Gods Love Us is published by Nightwood Editions, a Sunshine Coast publisher that enjoyed surprising sales with Goh's earlier book, The Girl From Ermia & Selected Poems. Both books are designed by the hot and in high demand graphic designer from Montreal, Kajin Goh, incidentally son of the master, and awesome poet in his own right. The handsome doctor read poems at Chapters for an hour and never did the audience flag, they were his; if he were unscrupulous, this humble doctor could lead a cult. He read long poems. With sound "O Bindoro Bindoro!" and sentiment, he gathers us into his fireside and then he lets his character speak, transports us within hearing of this bindlestiff ventriloquist making the doctor speak, the empathy, calm observation and evocative imagery of these poems capture your precious reading moments.
More with a capital M, more of the power of the earlier work, and more immediacy. Over the few years his practice has honed his lyrical precision some of the new Poems are delicate mental detonations, illuminations, satoris, if you please, and longer, stronger narrative discourses, more at home, more comfortable where he is, no longer the wide eyed and worried stranger, no longer the exile, more local in Vancouver, on the Gulf Islands, in Montreal and in Mexico, as well. A man of the world full of affection in the now. Endearing poems, enduring poems. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that his name was being whispered in Stockholm.
-billy little, Hornby Island
(This review initially appeared in'GYP'- Gulf Islande Phunnies "Under the general editorship of Baka Francescolito Washi, the millionaires buddhist")
Praise for Goh Poh Seng
"Dr. Goh Poh Seng... novelist, short story writer, playwright doctor of medicine, and certainly, one of Asia's finest living poets."
-Asia Magazine
"His talent is the most promising Malaysia and Singapore have between them."
-Drama Review, New York
"His work has a very special atmosphere and flavour and philosophy of its own, which particularly appeals to me since I have lived out here (Asia) for a long time. He is highly regarded."
-The Observer, Dennis Bloodworth