Boh Beh Zhao

Poetry • 104 pages • $20.90
Publishing 24 Apr 2025

Poems by
Cheng Him

Launching 26 Apr 2025,
5pm onwards at Sing Lit Station
at the BBZ Lounge. More details coming soon!

“I finally can understand poetry. It is written as it should be—in Singlish… to see it in this form is nothing short of brilliant.” Gurmit Singh

Cheng Him’s explosive debut poetry collection is a narrative-in-poems exploring the inner psyche of the mythical Singaporean Ah Seng, made prismatic through the lens of Buddhism and mid-2010s clubbing fervour. 

From the tumultuous days of his childhood to the wayward hurricane of his youth, Boh Beh Zhao charts the trajectory of someone wandering through life as though it has no beginning or conceivable end, and plots his eventual landing into the barren fields of the latter. Hop onboard Ah Seng’s chaotic journey and ask yourself: what does it mean to live life so fast that all else seems to stand still?

  • (b. 1995) is from Singapore. Their work has previously been published in Strange Horizons, the Willows Wept Review, the Kindling, the Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, and the Neuro Logical, amongst a number of other publications. 

    By a stroke of divine providence, Cheng Him was awarded an honourable mention in English Poetry for the 2023 Golden Point Award. Sadly, attempts to buy 4D and TOTO using numbers found at the award ceremony did not yield any substantial rewards. 

    Cheng Him is descended from Cantonese, Hainanese, and Hakka migrants, from sailors, property agents, provision store proprietors at Bras Basah, and herb-drying medicine makers from Choa Chu Kang. They are nominally a Budhhist with sprinklings of Taoism, and also a graduate of Singapore Polytechnic and Yio Chu Kang Secondary School.

MANUSCRIPT BOOTCAMP 2025 (POETRY)

MANUSCRIPT BOOTCAMP 2025 (POETRY)

MANUSCRIPT BOOTCAMP 2025 (POETRY)

Welcome to hell. Submissions for Manuscript Bootcamp 2025 (Poetry) open 1 Mar–30 Apr via Sing Lit Station’s Submittable page; longlisted manuscripts will be judged by Joelle Taylor, Madeline Lee and Pooja Nansi. For more info: <afterimage.press/bootcamp>

rib/cage

ALLTHETIME 01
Poetry • 84 pages • $20.90
Published 27 Feb 2025

Poems by
Rosaly Puthucheary,
ArunDtiha & Zeha

With a critical introduction by
Cyril Wong

Our ALLTHETIME folios present three poets across the generations in conversation with one another.

Pounding beneath rib/cage is a visceral struggle for selfhood and belonging. These poems shatter through the suffocating grip of silence and constraint. These are words carved into verse as sharp as bone—voiced into the stillness of night.

Within the pages of our first ALLTHETIME folio lies a collection spanning five decades. This chorus of voices across time confront unyielding questions about alienation and autonomy, reminding us that the fight remains as fierce as ever. Let these lines take root in your breath; we dare you to recite them with your whole damn chest.