For BOEY KIM CHENG ‘between stations‘ describes the state of the migrant writer, living between his place of birth, his adopted country, and the wider world; between the past and the present; between the city he is in, and those that live in his memory. The book traces the author’s travels through India, China, Egypt and Morocco, during the year of wandering between his departure from his native Singapore, to the making of his new home in Australia.

In each place he visits, the cosmopolitan mix of peoples, the markets and crossroads, the overlays of history and religion, remind him of his old city, now demolished, and of his gambler father, who would return after long absences to walk him down the vanished arcades and alleys, past the shophouses and hawkers’ stalls. Boey’s essays capture a historic moment in the modernisation of the Asian city; they chronicle the breakup and resilience of the family; they trace his formation as a poet. Visit the Facebook event listing here.

‘Between Stations‘

B O O K R E A D I N G
Date:  Friday, 8 Jan
Time: 7.30 pm
Venue:  BooksActually

BooksActually is located at 86 Club Street

BOEY KIM CHENG was born in Singapore and migrated to Australia in 1997. He is a prize-winning poet with four published collections, ‘Somewhere Bound’, ‘Another Place’, ‘Days Of No Name’ and ‘After The Fire’. His essays and poems have appeared in the Straits Times, Asia Literary Review, HEAT, Meanjin and the Quarterly Literary Review Singapore. He is a senior lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Newcastle