Patient History
Winner of the poetry category, The Writers' Centre Literary Awards 2024, NUS
Available in paperback and e-book format. Paperback + E-book bundle available below: Get the e-book at 50% off with each purchase of a paperback.
"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 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.
Read poems from Patient History →
Patient History
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Reviews
“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
"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
“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
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womb song
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Patient History
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dragon.paper.wind. (龙卷风)
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The Orchid Folios
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parsetreeforestfire
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Intruder
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Giving Ground
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Floating Clouds Beyond The Elastic Limit
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A Flying Crystal
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A Walk With My Pig
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A Bad Girl's Book of Animals
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GAZE BACK
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(Imperfect) Unhomed
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Picking off new shoots will not stop the spring: Witness poems and essays from Burma/Myanmar (1988-2021)
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Some Say, A Tapir
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Farquhar
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Poetry Moves: An Anthology of Poetry
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Contour: A Lyric Cartography of Singapore
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To Gather Your Leaving: Asian Diaspora Poetry from America, Australia, UK and Europe
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A Gathering of Themes
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a tiny space
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Right of the Soil
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Common Life: Drawings and Poems
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UnFree Verse
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Lost Bodies: Poems between Portugal and Home
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This Is Not A Safety Barrier: An Anthology of Poetry & Photography
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I Found A Bone and Other Poems
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Me Migrant
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Phedra
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Spomenik
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Bitter Punch
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Singapore Notebook & Blessed Isle
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UNION : 15 Years of Drunken Boat, 50 Years of Writing From Singapore
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Ars Poetica for the Day
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Do You Live In?
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The Wrong/Wrung Side of Love
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Babel Via Negativa
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Teaching Poetry To Adolescents: A Teacher's Guide to Little Things
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Never Before—50 Essential Poems / 不可预期—诗精50首
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SG Poems 2017-2018
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Love at the Gallery
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SG Poems 2015-2016
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Pilgrimage
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Unhomed
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Crossing Universes
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一首诗的时间 2015
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Right of the Soil (Chapbook)
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Finding Francis: A Poetic Adventure
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Footfalls in the Rain
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Light is like water
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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.
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No negotiation for blood debt
Feb 14, 2022
The Burmese language resistance poetry is deeply embedded in the country’s colonial past. When mo...
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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...
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