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Written in the voices of two gay men an Australian tourist and a Singaporean local Excess Baggage and Claim shines with a bright lucidity.
What makes this book so startling is not that these poems about difficult self-discovery are sometimes shocking, but that they rise out of darkness, and a sense of dislocation, with such tenderness and courage. This is an extraordinary collection of poetry a masterful collaboration by Singapore Literature Prize winner Cyril Wong and Australian poet Terry Jaensch. These poems are odes to longing and desire, sung at 4am from the back bar of an impossible city where the borders have yet to be created and have yet to be dismantled.
Paperback, 79 pages, published 2007
Author: Terry Jaensch, Cyril Wong
This is a shimmering, hard and beautiful collaboration. - Christos Tsiolkas, author of Dead Europe and Loaded.
Jaensch's always-deft phrasing and sense of metaphor twists the reader's expectations and compels us to watch more closely; Wong's candid, conversational style reveals the vagaries of faltering relationships and power plays. These characters take the microphone and sing; the confining world of their subculture setting the parameters for the universal lyrics of love and loss. - Cate Kennedy, author of Dark Roots and Sing, and Don t Cry.