I just read a review here, about a book that included something I wrote more than six months ago.

It was kind of a demoralizing experience, to be honest. Here's a quote:

"Following from this is a seeming tradition of describing the Merlion as monstrous at worst, and fragmented at best, which reaches an apotheosis in Alfian Sa'at's characteristically forceful image of it as a "post-Chernobyl nightmare". Other descriptions include "an absurd combination of parts" and "misfit offspring" (Liang Yue, trans. Yeo Wei Wei), a "poor exposed thing" (Paul Tan), a "mute mongrel" (Toh Hsien Min), a "mutant myth" (Grace Chua), a "lovechild of a strange coupling" (Marc Daniel Nair), a "mutant, mid-metamorphosis" (Geoffrey Lim), a "monstrous/ mating of scales and teeth" (Nicholas Chiang), and a "bastard statue" (Leon Yuchin Lau).

With such an unlovable façade, no wonder the two poems that most successfully employ the Merlion in writing about a Singaporean identity suggest one filled with either self-doubt or self-delusion."

Which kind of begs the question as to why a book solely on the Merlion was published in the first place. This sentiment is restated shortly after with:

"Furthermore, while several of the poems are fine, lyrical works individually, put together in an anthology, one can't help but notice the marked repetition of themes, images, and poetic devices used in response to the Merlion."

But isn't it logical that any collection of works on a certain theme, say lions or spoons, would have repeated images and concepts? Isn't it true that the reason why you publish collections is to collect and collate these perspectives in the first place?

And the most humorous (and demoralising) part was this:

"A poem may have merits when read on its own, but pale in comparison with a similar work by a more established poet. For example, Nicholas Chiang's "Merlion" flows with conversational ease, yet his final statement that the Merlion:

…is ours, somehow a homely

Reminder of things past and future, lit

With knowledge that we too are crazy

Amalgams of cultures, fitting nowhere,

Wear our misfit minds like this fish its hair.

although lyrical, comes across as a watered-down version of that found in Alfian's poem of almost the same name."

Well, maybe that was because I titled my poem "Merlion poem", stupidly forgetting that it was important to have a title in the first place.

But anyway, an interesting find while Googling my name in a spell of boredom! Hahaha!