Patient History
Launch Details
We are entering a summer of poetry! Patient History by Tricia Tan launches at Epigram Bookshop @ Singapore Art Museum:
- Meet the poet Tricia Tan, a young physician who believes in the capacity of words to heal.
- Listen to selected poems from her collection.
- Get a consultation with poetry doctors from Ethos Books, Kah Gay and Zining - details below!
25 May 2024 (Saturday)
2.00 - 2.30pm: Launch of Patient History
2.30 - 5.30pm: Poetry Clinic Day 1 - attending doctor(s): Mok Zining (Ethos editor); Ng Kah Gay (Ethos publisher)
26 May 2024 (Sunday)
2.30 - 5.30pm: Poetry Clinic Day 2 - attending doctor(s): Kah Gay
Pre-order your copy of Patient History from our webstore. Each purchase is also a ticket to a poetry consultation with Kah Gay or Zining. Pick up your pre-ordered copy of Patient History as well as the queue number for your consultation from the Ethos folks at Epigram Bookshop on 25 or 26 May. The idea is also for you to explore Epigram Bookshop and Singapore Art Museum before and after the launch.
Didn't pre-order? No worries! Walk-in customers who purchase Patient History from Epigram Bookshop can also join the queue and participate in the clinic. Can’t attend the clinic? Choose the delivery option.
About the Book
“Patient history” is a medical term describing the method by which doctors gather information about a patient’s past and present conditions. Yet, how much of a patient’s history do doctors really know, and how much agency do we have in determining our own histories?
Patient History is a whimsical exploration of the typically grim world of sickness and death. Woven from pop culture, fairytales, and East-meets-West childhood memories of growing up in Singapore, these fantasies are cotton candy sweet—osteoporosis becomes Singapore’s signature Chili Crab, a fistula transfigures into fairy, and organs are commemorated as a theme park.
Patient History
Slide to see
Book + Clinic (Self-collect on 25/26 May)
$16.00 SGD
Paperback (delivery)
$16.00 SGD
Reviews
"The poems in Patient History navigate a mother's illness through lush imagery and aquarium mind. The poems are also unafraid to refract illness and memory through different forms... in Patient History, the cataloguing of beautiful images acts as question marks to an uncertain mind, and the uncertainty amidst illness." —Victoria Chang, author of The Trees Witness Everything; Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief ; and Obit
"Patient History is a whimsical coming of age against the sobering backdrop of death and disease. Tricia Tan has a gift of drawing out sensory delight, and even wonderment, from the stark reality of ailing bodies. She subverts the conventions of a poetry collection by inviting you to join in her games of imagination through activity pages. You will find a refreshing antidote to despair at the brokenness of our world." —Amanda Chong
“A hospital ward becomes an aquarium, the body a rainforest, a mass in the womb a sun. These poems are equal parts whimsy, medical emergency and existential crisis. Here is art that marries mortality to beauty and fantasy as a way to discern, withstand, come to terms, offer comfort, courage, hope. Bewildering juxtapositions, pictorial interventions, haiku-esque summations of feeling; this is elemental poetry that strives to fulfil a fundamental purpose, drawing the spirit towards recovery, even transcendence.” —Cyril Wong, poet and fictionist
“Tricia Tan’s glorious debut is nothing short of a dazzling showcase. Patient History dares to be many adventurous, teeming things - eye-poppingly and mind-bogglingly so. Still, all the disparate texts seat well, in an orchestral coherence that almost defies its own quiet, veiled logic. In this doctor-poet’s good hands, all detail is studied and measured; no language is left reckless or unturned. The reader is witness to the deep care that remains always attendant, this controlled experiment in lyric-narrative issuing its aesthetic intelligence with cool confidence, yet holding together such an array of important emotional truths. This is the most imposing, curious, sumptuous incoming to appear in a long time. Already a winning collection, Tricia Tan’s Patient History is a tour de force, no less.” —Desmond Francis Xavier Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé Recipient of Singapore Literature Prize
Poetry
Book + Poetry Readings (Self-collect on 1 June)
$33.00 SGD
Paperback (Delivery, available after 1 June)
$18.00 SGD
dragon.paper.wind. (龙卷风)
Book + Clinic (Self-collect on 25/26 May)
$16.00 SGD
Paperback (delivery)
$16.00 SGD
Patient History
Paperback
$19.00 SGD
Paperback (autographed)
$19.00 SGD
Floating Clouds Beyond The Elastic Limit
Paperback
$19.00 SGD
Paperback (autographed)
$19.00 SGD
A Flying Crystal
Paperback
$19.00 SGD
A Walk With My Pig
Paperback
$18.60 SGD
E-book
$18.60 SGD
A Bad Girl's Book of Animals
E-book
$0.00 SGD
Paperback
$21.00 SGD
Picking off new shoots will not stop the spring: Witness poems and essays from Burma/Myanmar (1988-2021)
Paperback
$19.00 SGD
E-book
$19.00 SGD
The Orchid Folios
E-book
$0.00 SGD
Some Say, A Tapir
E-book
$0.00 SGD
Farquhar
Paperback
$16.00 SGD
Poetry Moves: An Anthology of Poetry
Paperback
$20.56 SGD
Contour: A Lyric Cartography of Singapore
Paperback
$28.04 SGD
To Gather Your Leaving: Asian Diaspora Poetry from America, Australia, UK and Europe
Paperback
$16.82 SGD
E-book
$16.82 SGD
parsetreeforestfire
Paperback
$28.00 SGD
A Gathering of Themes
Paperback
$14.00 SGD
E-book
$14.00 SGD
a tiny space
Paperback
$17.00 SGD
E-book
$17.00 SGD
Right of the Soil
Paperback
$16.82 SGD
E-book
$16.82 SGD
GAZE BACK
Paperback
$28.00 SGD
E-book
$28.00 SGD
Common Life: Drawings and Poems
Paperback
$23.36 SGD
UnFree Verse
Paperback
$16.00 SGD
E-book
$16.00 SGD
Lost Bodies: Poems between Portugal and Home
Paperback
$18.70 SGD
This Is Not A Safety Barrier: An Anthology of Poetry & Photography
Paperback
$18.00 SGD
I Found A Bone and Other Poems
Paperback
$12.00 SGD
E-book
$12.00 SGD
Me Migrant
Paperback
$16.00 SGD
E-book
$16.00 SGD
Giving Ground
Paperback
$16.00 SGD
E-book
$16.00 SGD
Phedra
Paperback
$18.60 SGD
E-book
$18.60 SGD
Spomenik
Paperback
$16.00 SGD
E-book
$16.00 SGD
Bitter Punch
Paperback
$10.00 SGD
Singapore Notebook & Blessed Isle
Paperback
$25.00 SGD
UNION : 15 Years of Drunken Boat, 50 Years of Writing From Singapore
Paperback
$16.00 SGD
Ars Poetica for the Day
Paperback
$16.00 SGD
Do You Live In?
Paperback
$19.00 SGD
The Wrong/Wrung Side of Love
Paperback
$21.50 SGD
Babel Via Negativa
Paperback
$14.00 SGD
E-book
$14.00 SGD
Equatorial Sunshine
Paperback
$10.00 SGD
The Hidden Papyrus of Hen-taui
Paperback
$18.00 SGD
Teaching Poetry To Adolescents: A Teacher's Guide to Little Things
Out of stock
Paperback
$18.60 SGD
Never Before—50 Essential Poems / 不可预期—诗精50首
Out of stock
Paperback
$18.60 SGD
SG Poems 2017-2018
Out of stock
Paperback
$11.21 SGD
Love at the Gallery
Out of stock
Paperback
$18.60 SGD
SG Poems 2015-2016
Out of stock
Paperback
$14.00 SGD
Pilgrimage
Out of stock
Paperback
$9.35 SGD
Unhomed
Out of stock
Paperback
$9.35 SGD
Crossing Universes
Out of stock
Paperback
$18.60 SGD
一首诗的时间 2015
Out of stock
Paperback
$10.00 SGD
Right of the Soil (Chapbook)
Out of stock
Paperback
$13.00 SGD
Finding Francis: A Poetic Adventure
Out of stock
Paperback
$14.95 SGD
Footfalls in the Rain
Out of stock
Paperback
$20.00 SGD
Light is like water
Out of stock
Paperback
$14.00 SGD
A Lover's Soliloquy
Out of stock
Out of print
Attunement
Is life hustling you out of tune? As the week roars by, we invite you to a slice of attunement penned lovingly by our authors, friends, and yours truly. Freshly delivered weekly with care. Intimacy guaranteed. Read selected letters below.
Magical, luminous things
Feb 19, 2022
I have flown across an ocean this week. This still sounds surreal to say.
Read more
No negotiation for blood debt
Feb 14, 2022
The Burmese language resistance poetry is deeply embedded in the country’s colonial past. When mo...
Read more
Burning holes in the darkness
Feb 7, 2022
Poets killed in broad daylight, writers tortured and maimed. I wonder if their ghosts watch on fr...
Read more
