Ginsberg, sing me a jiwang song!

Interspersing lyric poetry, photography and the heart-wrenching lyrics of 90s jiwang, nor’s Ginsberg, sing me a jiwang song! is part of AFTERIMAGE’s select range of limited-edition concept-driven chapbooks, making them as engrossing to read as they are beautiful to behold.

This is slice-of-life. This is never-gonna-love-again, but also kiss-me-hard-before-you-go. This is life-in-technicolour, and nor in all their 4C glory. Ginsberg, sing me a jiwang song! begins with the soaring sentimentality of 90s Malay rock ballads—the sound of karaoke rooms, military camps, and bus interchanges across Singapore and Kuala Lumpur—and asks the restless spirit of the Beat Poets to update itself in this key. 

In this mixtape of poems, longing becomes communal, laughter cuts through loss, and survival resounds in chorus. These poems collide Howl with heartbreak anthems and improvise with stadium-sized longing to create a new language for queer kinship, joy and that summertime sadness by your heavenly side.