Arts...Travels...Writing

    In celebration of poetry month, sharing an annotation of my favourite poems. This is by no means exhaustive, but I thought I'd share it now, and perhaps update with my other favourites later: 1.  Banks of a Canal –Seamus Heaney Seamus Heaney’s last poem starts simply—with a canal, a small and calm body of water, not as fierce as the wild rivers that run through rugged valleys nor as vast as the ocean. While it starts quietly,  the poem eventually morphs into something bigger and almost imperceptibly ends in a lofty place. Like the word canal , the water that flows through it tends to be quiet, but it nonetheless touches lives though perhaps not in the overt way that great rivers do; it does not provide a source of livelihood like epic rivers do, but touches the soul by “slowing time to a walking pace”. While this poem is based on an 1872 painting of Gustave Caillebotte of the same title, Seamus Heaney clearly does not duplicate th...

Yesterday, I joined a 3.8 Kilometre Walk along Labrador Park in support of a skills training centre in Singapore. It was my first time to visit Labrador Park, and was I surprised at how scenic the trail was. Fortunately, I was able to bring my small camera and so I was able to take a few snaps. Sharing below some of them: I started taking photos the minute I saw this blue vista, which was after the first kilometre of the walk. The first leg was along the swamp area and gave a forest feel. I was busy chatting with my friends then that I forgot to bring out my camera. It was around 9:00am when this was taken, and yet the heat was already scorching (as predicted, the first two weeks of April were supposed to be very warm). So I was glad for the leafy trees that provided much needed shade and made the walk bearable. This is a historic site in the area, supposedly the entry point of earlier Chinese traders who came to Singapore Sometimes the water was too still ...