“The poems in Cyril Wong’s collection are indeed seeds – each one starts something vibrant and new growing in the world. And though he may write of disaster, it is with triumph; though he may look into the darkest corners, he finds a light there that he brings back to fill his poems, and from there, to fill the reader’s mind. These are seeds of light that believe in life – so much so that they can look at it honestly." - Cole Swensen
"Cyril Wong's poems, clear as water, open our way for wonderful and strange journeys through known and unknown places, places where we feel sure of nothing yet dead sure of everything." - Clarence Major
"Cyril Wong’s evocative and sensual poems...continue to pulsate long after the lights have gone out. They remind me most of the movies of Wong Kar-Wai, the consummate film-maker of lost love and desire." - Lewis Warsh
"One feels excitement when Cyril Wong's lyric heart breaks free of the quotidian into altogether unexpected territory 'divided between time zones,' his transpacific sensibility a fine refreshment in a world where 'Artaud sneers/ and looks oddly/ like K.D. Lang.' There's no telling where this poet might be heading next." - Timothy Liu
"Very wonderful and evocative." - Anne Waldman
"...his work expands beyond simple sexuality—being 'just a gay poet,' as he puts it—to embrace themes of love, alienation and human relationships of all kinds." - TIME (Asia Edition)
"This is strong stuff, and while Wong's delivery is more direct than poems on the same subject by Sharon Olds, his unflinching, flinty voice is reminiscent of that North American writer. The poems have a devastating cumulative effect." - The Australian
"His poems are indeed seeds: insistent, alive and burgeoning with a pulse that marks him as Singapore's foremost confessional poet." - The Straits Times
"In these poems, the expressions of rebellion against a seemingly pre-ordained world order resemble those of the English romantic poets William Blake and A.C. Swinburne." - South China Morning Post
"Unmarked Treasure sculpts a space for the reader to think, baffle over and be elated." - The Business Times
"Erudite, lyrical and very personal." - IS Magazine
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Cyril Wong has won the National Arts Council's Young Artist Award for Literature (2005) and the Singapore Literature Prize (2006). He is the author of six poetry collections published by Firstfruits Publications: squatting quietly (2000), the end of his orbit (2001), below: absence (2002), unmarked treasure (2004), like a seed with its singular purpose (2006) and tilting our plates to catch the light (2007), which was listed by The Sunday Times as among the best 5 books of 2007. He is the author of The Boy With The Flower That Grew Out Of His Ass (Math Paper Press, 2007) and co-author of Excess Baggage and Claim (Transit Lounge, 2007) with Terry Jaensch. Internationally, his poems have appeared in Atlanta Review, Fulcrum, Cider Press Review, Asheville Poetry Review, Cimarron Review, Poetry International, Tinfish Journal, Spoon River Poetry Review, Vox, Wascana Review, Poetry Scotland, Poetry New Zealand, Yuan Yang, Aesthetica Magazine, Asia Literary Review, Dimsum, Ars Interpres, Ideya and online at The Cortland Review, Slope, The Drunken Boat, Danforth Review, Three Candles, Shampoo, Lodestar Quarterly, Cordite, the MAG, Hutt, The Melic Review, Poems Niederngasse, nthposition and The Other Voices International Project, among others. His poems and stories have also appeared in Dance the Guns to Silence (Flipped Eye Publishing, 2005), Chinese Erotic Poems (Everyman's Library, 2007), Force Majeure (Kalam/Langgeng Gallery, 2007), Berliner Anthologie: 'Irdisches Leben, blauer Dunst' (Alexander Verlag Berlin, 2004), Silverfish New Writing 3 (Silverfishbooks, 2003), The Daily Star, Silverkris, Music in the Lion City, Singapore, Sedici racconti dall'Asia estrema (Isbn, 2005), Prestige, No Other City (Ethos, 2000), Love Gathers All (Ethos, 2002), From Boys To Men (Landmark, 2002), Best of Singapore Erotica (Monsoon Books, 2006), Over There: Poems from Singapore and Australia (Ethos, 2007) and Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, & Beyond (W. W. Norton, 2008). He has also written for Nerter (in Spanish translation), White Fungus, Idea to Ideal and Broadsheet.
He was a featured poet at the Edinburgh International Book Festival (UK), the Hong Kong International Literary Festival, the Austin International Poetry Festival (Texas, USA), the Sydney Writers' Festival, the Utan Kayu International Literary Biennale (Jakarta/Magelang, Indonesia), the Queensland Poetry Festival (Brisbane, Australia), the Singapore Writers' Festival and Singapore's first poetry festival, Wordfeast. He is the founder and co-editor of SOFTBLOW, an international poetry journal online. Cyril has co-written a paper, "Indifferent, or Strictly Oblivious", for the Performance Studies international (PSi #10) conference held in Singapore and first organised by New York University. Jason Wee, visual artist and writer, produced a spoken-word CD of Cyril's poems, Dedication. Cyril's words were set to movement by dancer Daniel K in SOM that was staged in Singapore and Hong Kong (presented by E-Side Modern Dance Company). In 2004, his poems were performed in Moving Afterlife, the opening presentation for the Queensland Poetry Festival (Brisbane, Australia), utilising contemporary and classical Indian dance, music and movement-theatre. He also collaborated with filmmaker Wee Li Lin and visual artist Charles Lim for an episode of Arts Central's programme, S:PUR.
Cyril's poetry was featured in End of the Beginning - Ravana for the 27th Bali Arts Festival and he wrote a verse monologue, Still Flight that was performed at the 2005 Magdalena International Festival of Women in Contemporary Theatre in the U.S.A. A performance of Still Flight, which had been translated into Chinese dialects, earned a nomination for Best Actor at the 2006 DBS Life! Theatre Awards. Cyril's poems have been read on Passion 99.5FM, NewsRadio 93.8 FM and Lush 99.5FM. His work was included in W!ld Rice's Riding the NiCE Bus, directed and produced by Krishen Jit for the Citigroup Kuala Lumpur International Literary Festival in 2004 and Second Link for the Singapore Theatre Festival in 2006.
TIME (Aug 19-25, 2003) described Existence, a play based on Cyril's poems by The Fun Stage, as portraying "the love of two young Singaporean men for each other as doomed," as well as how "being accepted by mainstream society doesn't mean that all the problems faced by homosexuals will go away." His poem "One Track Vision" has been adapted into a short-film by Tania Sng. It has been featured on Arts Central and screened at the 2nd Singapore Shorts Film Festival and the 2005 International Creteil Women Film Festival. He was a co-creative coordinator for Poetry in ACTION! in the Second 42 Theatre Festival by Action Theatre in 2001, which was nominated for Best Ensemble at the DBS Life! Theatre Awards. Viola da gamba player, Shaun Ng, adapted his poems to music in Suites of a Stranger Taste, Book 1.
Cyril has contributed reviews to The Straits Times, Today, The Arts Magazine, Kakiseni and Singapore Theatre Reviews. Aside from being a poetry mentor for the National Arts Council's Mentor Access Project, he was co-editor of the Quarterly Literary Review Singapore and a guest editor for The 2nd Rule and Gangway. He won an NAC-SPH Golden Point Award, a Potent Prose Ax Prize, and he is also a recipient of grants from the National Arts Council, British Council, Hong Leong Foundation, Lee Foundation and Singapore International Foundation.
Taught by Belgium-based soprano Lu Ying Chun and mezzo-soprano Yang Jie from the Beijing Central Conservatory, Cyril was a soloist in the early-music group, Musica Obscura, and he has been the Music Director of World-in-Theatre for their production of The Gospel According To Mark. He is also a part of The Singers Vocal Ensemble that was the champion in the Small Choir category in the 16th Prague International Festival of Advent and Christmas Music with Petr Eben Award and the Grand Prix winner for best overall choir at the 1st International Festival of Advent and Christmas Music in Bratislava, Slovakia. Cyril performed in Pain of a Million Ants for The Necessary Stage's M1 Fringe Festival in 2006. He has performed a concert of Love Songs that travelled to the Hong Kong Fringe Club and the Seoul Fringe Festival. He was one of four soloists in diskodanny.com's performance of Vermillion (listed by The Sunday Times as one of the best five dance performances of 2007) for the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival and Forward Moves for the Singapore Arts Festival in 2007. He has also performed William Walton's Façade for the Singapore Writers Festival 2007. His short story, "Falling Off", has been adapted for the Singapore Short Story Project 3 on Arts Central in 2008.
