Remedial Kids: playful academic lectures for the culturally curious

Narrative vs. Nostalgia: Writing about the past in Singapore

Remedial Kids is a social community for the culturally curious. We host playful academic lectures at cosy bars across Singapore.

Note: Ticket includes 1 happy hour drink

Session #12

Let's face it - Sing Lit has an obsession with history.

For a nation always dreaming about the future, there seems to be no more contested or well-trodden subject in Singapore writing. But if we take a closer look: how do poets research and reinvent the past, which seems more often to be the province of novelists and historians? And is it really possible for writers of all genres - borrowing Ezra Pounds' words - to "make it new" again?

Theophilus Kwek (poet) in conversation with Prof C. J. Wee Wan-Ling (NTU English).

About the speakers:

Theophilus Kwek has published five collections of poetry, most recently Commonwealth (Carcanet Press, 2025). In 2023, he was the youngest writer and first Singaporean to be awarded the Cikada Prize, for poetry that "defends the inviolability of life". His creative nonfiction debut, Odeon, is forthcoming from Ethos Books in 2026.

C.J. Wee Wan-Ling is Professor of English at Nanyang Technological University. He is the author of The Asian Modern: Culture, Capitalist Development, Singapore and the editor of Plays in English: The Collected Works of Kuo Pao Kun, vol. 4. His most recent work is A Regional Contemporary: Art Exhibitions, Popular Culture, Asia (MIT Press, 2025).

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher Remedial Kids