Bitter Punch

Book excerpt: Shortlisted for the 2018 Singapore Literature Prize Bitter Punch is Loh Guan Liang’s second collection of poetry. With a wry eye for the everyday and its often forgotten characters, Loh explores what it means to live and love in the city. Even as it depicts the tension between ourselves and the spaces we inhabit, Bitter Punch still seeks sweetness in life’s hard, bitter moments. "At the heart of Bitter Punch is the passing of love. Loh Guan Liang has constructed a personal map of elegiac half-escapes although his book is also a love letter to the enigmatic city that has been sustaining him. These poems will haunt you with its cool detachment, its overthinking, and its sombre rhythm in search of connection through words." -Gwee Li Sui, poet and critic