“I rather like this poem, since it’s whimsical. But nobody else seems to like it, so I grudgingly tossed it into the cyber-scrap pile. A person can’t really relate to it unless they have a weird house with an orange bathroom.”

“These were written sometime between the 1985 - 1990 . This was back before the Internet and I was just beginning to try and share my work, navigating the world of postage and S.A.S.E. terminology. Back then I was even more thin-skinned so if a work was rejected or not returned it would be at least a year before I tried sending something out again, if ever. Of course, the critic's voice went for the easiest self-accusations when it came to what was wrong with the work: pretentious, trite, hackneyed, cliche, especially if a poem had an ekphrastic influence. In 1990 I moved geographically but it was not a cure for any of the hypersensitivity which went into my being creative, so it was a decade before I began sending work out again even while I kept on writing in secret. Even then the work sent was not from the earlier 80s, but selections stored from manilla envelopes written in the intervening years. Three years ago or so I came across the 1980s work that was typed (not sure if originally handwritten has been chucked) scanned them as Adobe PDF and revised after converting back to Word. Enclosed are three which went through that self-laceration process.”

“This poem was built painstakingly slow, written and rewritten line by line. I have a habit of leaning toward the melancholy in my art, and this was made with the goal of finding optimism in grief. Though I’m outwardly a bubbly person, it feels awkward to incorporate that into my poetry since so much of art praises “tortured artists”- as if you can only be deep by being somber.”

“Honestly, I really don't like the style of "I Am From" poems. This started out as something I wrote during orientation week for college, but after a couple of edits, I realized I really just didn't vibe with the way these sorts of poems focus on who you are relative to your past locations. As someone who's moved upwards of 7 times in the past 20 years, I'm not beholden to a specific location. Instead, I'm more attracted to the memories I have and what stories they tell about me. So, this version of an "I Am From" poem never saw the light of day.”

“I ‘trashed’ this piece because I felt that it would be difficult for others to relate to. Sometimes I like writing poetry that only I will understand. This piece happens to be one of these poems. While I enjoy this type of poetry, I do think it can be difficult for others to understand or grasp on to.”

“These are three poems from a map in my notes app that has been gathering both words and dust over the span of two years. They are strings of words, evocations of emotions that ran through me after a boy broke my heart. I always felt that publishing these somewhere would be too much and if he would see them, I felt like he would win in a way, certainly seeing how much I care in these poems, the hurt that runs through them. This boy turned out to be a very dangerous person who lied and emotionally abused me for a year, and I feel like all these words are an attestation to that, even if I wasn’t aware at the time. So, they gathered dust in my phone for a long time because I never felt that these specific ones truly rang out the sounds my voice was trying so desperately to sound out. I see now that they were trying to tell me something, that they were asking for help and I was ignoring myself. They might not be the best I have ever written, but changing them now after so long feels like altering the truth of what I was writing about at the time. The first poem was once supposed to be a song, but the words kept pouring, and no melody has yet found its way between the words.”

“The reason why I’ve not sent this out anywhere is because it feels kind of like a Frankenstein’s monster of a poem - like it should actually be two poems - or like it has some superfluous elements in it that render it unlovable to most readers.

There is a Cormac McCarthy quote to start off with - already a bad sign – especially if you consider that at the time of writing this poem, I had read exactly zero books by McCarthy and mostly just knew his work based off of all the quotes and tributes that people shared of him after his passing.
The stanzas seem to be kind of all over the place, tonally.
There is also a hyperlocal reference to the Singapore MRT line in the first stanza that readers outside Singapore would not relate to or understand. (Essentially, the MRT’s Circle Line is an incomplete loop at the moment, that is slated to be closed in 2026. As a result, if you, like the speaker of this poem, were to take the direct train on it from Dhoby Ghaut to One-North rather than transferring to a different line, you’d be stuck on the MRT for an extra 20 minutes or so.)
I confess that I like that it’s a bit of a hot mess and couldn’t bring myself to edit it further or to send it out to anyone who wouldn’t see that much like Frankenstein’s monster, this poem too wants to be loved for what it is.”

“I was unsure of this poem because it strayed from conventional African poetics. It did its own thing and I wondered whether it would be received well.”

“‘Beach Death’ is a poem I very much found as I wrote it, in that, I wasn’t quite sure who exactly I was writing about when the words began. The images that came to me, and their associations in my life, ended up blurring the lines between several people in my life, overlapping the ways in which they were all both meaningful and harmful to me. I found this personal mystery compelling and felt that any further intricate work with the poem would destroy my relationship with it.”
“'Muzzling’ came at a time when I was uncomfortable with the vulnerability that sharing it would require, both through sharing my own thoughts and directly referencing the people in my life. I put it away in hopes of a time when that discomfort would be entirely gone.”

“‘A Million Vincents’ was written earlier this year. I was inspired by the idea of seeing Vincent Van Gogh everywhere. I tried to get it published, but went nowhere and abandoned it. I'm not sure whether the problem was with the idea or the execution or the genre. Maybe I'll revisit the idea in fiction...or just leave it alone.

’C.diff’ was based on my experience catching C.diff in hospital last year, during a stem cell transplant for lymphoma. It was supposed to be a surreal take on it, and I really tried to push it. No takers. I don't know whether it was too out there for people. Anyhow, it ended up abandoned and unloved.”

“‘Conversations with my better half’ began as a writing exercise in an advanced poetry class. I was interested in the concept of a poem written in the form of a conversation with a clear back-and-forth, but every time I tried to mess with the formatting of it, I hated it more and more. I submitted it for our in-class workshops, and sharing such intimate and personal work with my classmates made me recede into my shell just a little bit. I never touched it again until now.”

“I didn't give this piece a chance as I think the theme is hazy. When you are writing about life, it gives you endless dimensions to write on. However, I believe if you can define any one of aspects clearly, it does the trick. I felt that I poorly touched on this aspect. “

“It is very short form. Up for interpretation.”

“This was one of my few very early attempts at poetry. It was also one of the very few moments in my life that I have written unbridled and unstructured. I wrote this piece two years ago, and did not hesitate to bin it straight after it was done. I couldn't read it without feeling scalding hot shame for the way my desperation manifested on the page. It is a poem about desire and unrequited wanting. Why was I expecting my desperation to not show? I loved it because it is mine. I loathed it because it was mine. I am thankful to have never emptied my laptop bin.”

“I trashed this piece because I was told by a friend no one will want to read this. It sounds way too feminist and woke, and there are enough poems on the internet covering this issue. However, I wrote this poem because I was angry, when someone close to me suggested women should stop complaining about periods and menopause because we all have to go through it and that’s just the way it is. This poem was written out of pure rage and also to educate those disillusioned people, that we do not suffer the same way, we all struggle on many different levels, so please do not insist we should just put up with it. It is not a weakness, but a strength.”

“This was a love song to my favorite cat who has a bad heart and other health problems although he’s only seven. I didn’t set out to write a poem, just to show my love and grief in words. The piece might be trash, but Perry is a treasure.”

“This was a purely cathartic piece that I didn't deem good enough for publishing simply because of its rambling tendency and the function it served for myself - to put all of this insurmountable feeling onto a page.”

“I originally wrote this poem on a work shift, destined for the person to whom this poem is written for. This self-enforced notion of privacy meant I didn't want to submit this piece, to wave these feelings in the air so brazenly, but maybe, now realising, maybe I can.”

“An eyewitness account. I like the story and the “punchline” very much but feel the expression at times is rather cumbersome.”

“This is the first poem I wrote inspired by my work as a German teacher in a refugee camp. I’ve made the experience that especially girls who come to Germany only accompanied by one parent often see a kind of “fatherly friend” in me. Therefore, my colleagues often joke about “my daughters”. This poem has a lot of emotional deepth for me. It is probably the poem I have submitted the most times and consequently have received the most rejections for, often with the editors telling me, how much they liked it (but still couldn’t accept it). I put it into my “Abandoned” folder, because I am beginning to think it is too personal and maybe also hard to understand without the background information.”