OF ZOOS, founded 2012, is an online literary magazine by Singaporeans for Singaporeans, and everyone else. We publish poetry and its sub-branches, or poetically sensible art (fiction/prose, visual art & photographs, audiovisuals, etc.).

 

We believe that the poem is crafted out of a regular grammar of lines, rhyme, and rhythm, as much as it is created from holes cut out in your mathematics 6A textbook (if it hasn’t already been burnt) or epiphanic doodles in the margins of that office memo headed to the shredder. By the phrase “poetry and its sub-branches/poetically sensible art”, we mean (or try to mean) traditional poetic forms (from the sonnet to the villanelle to blank verse), wildly experimental forms, flash fiction pretending to be prose poems, illustrated poems, art installations professing a poetic sensibility, erasure poems blacked out from old newspapers, multiple-poet collaborations, handwritten poems on napkins, a photograph of your dog, Moxie, etc.

 

OF ZOOS loves literature and art; invention and tradition; artificiality and verisimilitude; ecstasy and subtlety; tenderness and the sublime. We adore paradox, the courageous metaphor, experimental voices, and the verbal (or visual!) performance of the word. We are looking for the new poem in poeticised Singlish, the next Dickinsonian dash, and Gerard Manley Hopkins set to hip hop. We’ll stand up for ideas.

 

 

~ MASTHEAD ~

 

The Lory 🦜 is a prose fiction writer and erstwhile full-time book editor. She is obsessed with textual sleights of hand, ergodic stories, and heart-baring narratives. She has an MA in Creative Writing (Prose) from the University of East Anglia and despite being a bird, does not like nuts in her cookies.

 

The Turtle 🐢 is mostly a poet and editor. He looks for surprise and delight in the things he reads. He’s had two books of poetry published, and has been supported by residencies from the University of Iowa and Nanyang Technological University. His latest project is caring for his two baby terrapins.

 

The Worm 🪱 hates worms above all else. (That is a viscerally disgusting emoji.) She is an editor of many things, with her own book-editing practice and volunteer work at the indie press Gaudy Boy. She is drawn to work that confuses yet clarifies, dares and defies, says something.