Heng Siok Tian (b. 1963)

1. BIOGRAPHY

2. CRITICAL INTRODUCTION

3. SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

4. SELECTED POEMS

• My City, My Canvas

• Mother's Gold

• Grandma’s Attic, Mom’s HDB

• Teochew Phrases: Down Under at Prahan Market (Established 1890), Melbourne, Australia, 2016

• Teochew Phrases: Your Teochew Proverbs

• Simple Days (Remembering Mother in Portugal, June 2015), Day 12 

5. SELECTED VIDEOS

6. TRACK CHANGES: “SONNET TO AN ARRIVAL: CHANGI JEWEL 2019”

SELECTED POEMS

Teochew Phrases: Your Teochew Proverbs

Now that you passed,
your proverbs ring pure and clear:

Paper cannot wrap fire.

What is yours is yours.

To be old is difficult, counting on children even more so.

A tiger's legacy: its skin.
A man's: his name.

A flower does not bloom forever.
The sky is not forever fine.

The rich can be poor, the poor can be rich.

Fire and water have no kin.

People act, heavens watch.

And now, I miss your voice, 
forgetting my Teochew words.
How mute have I become, 
when earlier, how deaf.

by Heng Siok Tian
from Grandma's Attic, Mom's HDB, My Wallpaper (2021)

SELECTED POEMS: “Simple Days (Remembering Mother in Portugal, June 2015), Day 12” >