Author: lim

A member of Singapore-based writing collective /stop@BadEndRhymes ("/s@ber"), Valen dwells in the swamp of poetry. He has been published in various publications, including Anxious Poets Society, Eunoia Review and Quarterly Literary Review Singapore. He has performed his work at the Arts House, the Singapore Art Museum, and in various dingy bars.

An Absence

I have been away for so long! I’ve been busy ever since I started full-time work in 2021. My first few orders of business this weekend will be to update my blog to include SingPoWriMo 2020, 2021 and 2022. I should also start writing again and try and submit more regularly. I’ve been writing for […]

FREEWRITING EXERCISE #110

I dream of a New York apartment. Ceiling-to-floor windows, a torrent of light. I can’t see anything in all this optimism. Can’t make outthe shape of my own demise anymore. Can’t think of a better way to die. My body dressesitself and clockworks its way to work and back.20,000 days to go before a final […]

FREEWRITING EXERCISE #109

Jericho Brown once said every metaphor is a vehicle and a tenor,bringing you somewhere you did not know to go. Looking out the window down sun-dressed boulevards, the radio a soft purras the sand comes into view,I find myself out there in the light. Here, I imagine building a home by my hands, plank by […]

FREEWRITING EXERCISE #108

i don’t want to read anything in the news / i don’t want to care about another crisis is a nearby country / i don’t want to hear about the latest and greatest / i don’t want to be told, wow, we have it good don’t we / i don’t want a sermon on my […]

FREEWRITING EXERCISE #107

For I I want, and I want. I have learnt of your body, and the way she co-exists with mine. My tongue, my pesky mind. My over eager hand, my overthink. Even now I dream of home ownership, and then some. Maybe marriage?Maybe a distant vision, like a neighbour’s cat clawing at a window.Or that […]

FREEWRITING EXERCISE #106

So it goes, most of the time; the page turns and withers away. Those dreamsI’ve brushed past in my youth – where did they go? Into the drawer of a dusty office, into somebody’s waiting hand. I have not written, truly, in months. Where did I keep the key, where did I fall from, where […]

FREEWRITING EXERCISE #105

Can’t draw ink from an empty well.Can’t speak when I mean nothing.Don’t, then. Eyes rolling like heads,teeth clenched shut like iron girders,I live through life, distant. The futureis already here. She takes up too much space and now I don’t know how to write anymore. Nothingflows when you’ve dug deep enough.It’s time to get your […]

Expression and Consequence – On Writing and Growth

I pen my thoughts about picking up writing, continuing to write from a place of vulnerability, and what ramifications it might have for my work as a writer, as well as its impact on my loved ones and I. I also think about a path forward, although I cannot guarantee that I can take it.

FREEWRITING EXERCISE #104

For I. Under the warm pillowy cover of night my hand stirs and reaches for yours. If we kept sleeping this way, limb to limb, our palms the interchange of our veins, our quiet thoughts; or the ones that scream at us every day, as we walk by doing nothing but existing; or thosethat bark […]