going home

Shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize 2024:
Best Debut – Poetry in English

“As a sequence, going home unfolds with a mixture of astonishing technical assurance and intense personal and physical immediacy. We are reminded that the tongue tastes as well as speaks, and that the complex experience of a many-layered cultural history is built into the whole life of the body. These are poems in which the meaningfulness of the convergence of body and soul is wonderfully captured; a rare, vivid, sensitive, precise voice.”
—Rowan Williams, Former Archbishop of Canterbury, Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, theologian, and poet

“Afternoons become beautiful when you sit with Jonathan Chan’s going home. The poems glisten with an impeccable, pearlescent quality – a distinct purity of soul. This is confident lyric-making that builds on its own strengths, image upon image, line upon line, poem upon poem. This is a voice of poised restraint, at once clear-headed and self-assured. What a rare joy to witness and draw in the quiet wisdom. It’s a collection I would keep on my bookshelf for life.”
—Desmond FX Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé, Poet and Founder, Squircle Line Press

“Jonathan Chan’s first collection has a voice of sturdy sobriety, with a sure grasp of a wide range of stanzaic forms. The precision with language accentuates his originality of thought as well as sensitivity to the world at large. However, it is his truthfulness of feelings that speaks most to me. going home is therefore a return to a gracious openness to share his “landscape of unseen time” and his vulnerability, all of which flows as blessings from his God.”
—Heng Siok Tian, Poet, author of Mixing Tongues (2011)

“Jonathan Chan’s debut poetry collection is a special joy to read. His poetic eye notices specific things, whether present or absent. He writes in a way that exhibits the stillness of attention, yet every poem has a well-woven vitality, yielding an extraordinary sense of life’s continuity across memory, borders, cultures and the ages. Chan’s spirituality and humanity shine through in every line.”
—Aaron Lee, Poet, author of Coastlands (2014)

“In this collection, tender at moments, heart-wrenchingly raw at others, Jonathan Chan interrogates his journey to cosmopolitan adulthood. Through his lyricism, one realises that beyond the false Singaporean dichotomy of “heartlander”-“globalist” we are all in some way touched by different cultures. Though political interests might strive to box us in, poets like Jonathan can set us free.”
—Sudhir Thomas Vadaketh, Author, Floating on a Malayan Breeze (2012)

“This is a journey which makes its way across multiple locales and swathes of emotional and cultural landscapes. Shuttle-like they pass, weaving the disparate elements of human existence – the physical, emotional, spiritual, and metaphysical, the sacred and the secular into the warp and weft of this transcendent collection. At the end of going home, the reader finds the ordinary rendered its beautiful due, standing before us, becalmed, and luminous.
—Leonora Liow, Author, Moth: Stories (2015)

“When I arrived at the launch of his debut collection going home a fortnight ago, the first thing that struck me about Jonathan Chan was his voice; thoughtful and even, but with a hint of the self-assuredness that characterises so much of his writing.”
—Theophilus Kwek, Poet, author of Moving House (2020)

“The poems in going home celebrate the innovations of diaspora, featuring fecund cross-pollinations between cultures, of jook salted with turkey bones (“5 foundings”).

Yet new traditions are never without complications: shame in front of Korean elders (“yellowface”), a chuseok in Cambridge without a visible moon (“i celebrated chuseok”), or beloved foods forced to take on new names (“5 foundings”).

there is gratitude, in “5 foundings”, for what remains unscathed from the hegemony of culture (“.. but at least our / names can remain / the same”)”.
—Shuwei Sun, Book reviewer

“Jonathan is a wonderful and insightful poet. This volume lives up to and exceeds the high and deserved praise it has received. Inshallah, we shall all be blessed with many more equally remarkable volumes from his beautiful mind.”
—T. Wyatt Reynolds, Poet, historian, and scholar, Columbia University

“Jonathan Chan’s going home is a collection on movement and roots, but underneath all these poems lies a sense of tenderness and the speakers of these poems try to gather a sense of home. For me, the strongest poems are the ones about migration and settling. The first poem in particular, ‘5 foundings”, really captures the tension of uprooting oneself and fear of planting settling in a new place. Now, this isn’t new to Sing Lit (which has a whole tradition of migration poetry due to state narratives of SG being a city of migrants), perhaps the more interesting part is the latter section on religious poetry, which read like doxologies. I like the overall simplicity of the work, somehow it reads differently from other new work that’s coming out locally.”

“As a debut collection, going home is a wonderful read that establishes Chan’s love for the literary tradition and blends with the rich new voices in today’s literary scene. His technical craft is brilliant, and I look forward to reading more of his work as he pushes himself further with the next publication he puts out.”
—Crispin Rodrigues, Poet, author of How Now Blown Crow (2021), Review in Quarterly Literary Review Singapore

“As a writer and editor of poetry and creative prose, Jonathan Chan is a nascent voice, but there is absolute seriousness in his craft, every word hewn from patience and observation.”
—Yeow Kai Chai, Poet, author of One To The Dark Tower Comes (2020)

“One of the things that impressed me about this collection is the spatial imaginary of the poems. By this I mean that issues of place and of finding one’s place are constantly being engaged and negotiated (hence, ‘going’).”
—David Mahan, Lecturer in Religion and Literature, Institute of Sacred Music, Yale University

“going home — Chan’s debut collection of poetry — contemplates intercultural and migrant identities through his keen observations of contemporary social issues and his private experiences. Though speaking of diasporic longing, and at times loss and pain, the poems ring with tenderness and a calm assurance, especially the ones that echo intimate familial memories.”
—Boedi Widjaja, Artist, Blurb for SUSPECT’s Book of the Year 2022

“From describing [Greenwich] as “the haven of low-tax suburbia, the ballast of private equity.. and the monotony of finance husbands” (“another life”), to capturing the bustle of Hong Kong in a powerful image of “heels clutched from anxious feet” (“5 foundings”), Jonathan Chan’s debut poetry collection, going home is a masterful display of sensibilities. […] if we consider each poem in this book leading up to “epistle” as a letter he desired to write, his valiant attempt has indeed produced a book of letters well worth reading.”
—Lucy Cheng, Review in The Methodist Message

“…a hot new poetry collection by a hot new SG poet…

Though there’s some lovely sonic play that comes from the multilingual listing of landscapes he encounters on his journeys (e.g. Farewells, moving from Seoul to Houston to SG), most of this is a deeply earnest account of a 3rd culture kid never quite fitting in, looking respectfully at his parents & grandparents, finding refuge in Christianity.”
—Ng Yi-Sheng, Writer and researcher, author of Lion City (2018)

“Chan is equal parts poet and cartographer: mapping the emotional landscapes of his family from Seoul to Hong Kong, from Kuala Lumpur to new York–with Singapore as his epicentre.

The spirit of Chan’s collection is thus best encapsulated by its title: going home. The present continuous suggests that Chan’s process of searching for a place he belongs to is one that is never quite finished; as someone who has spent his formative years straddling continents, he is unable to pinpoint his belonging wholly to a singular place. Instead, Chan’s process of finding his identity is an amalgamation of his and his family’s travels.”
—Brian Lee, Writer and poet, Review in sploosh!

“His style is erudite, and he chooses his words and forms carefully. His poems stay in the heart and mind long after having been read; resonating with the reader personally as he captures life’s emotional issues with his deep thoughts.

Jonathan writes with raw honesty. The love of his family and the acceptance of the strangeness, of home-sickness and adaptation (termed “perennial unease” in the 5th poem,) resound in the poems as they progress. This book is very personal.

It is an epic voyage of history and heart.”
—Rena Ong, Poet, Review in Studio Journal

“Jonathan hopes that those who read going home will be invited to ask themselves what belonging truly is to them. He hopes that it encourages readers to contemplate questions of truth, beauty, and justice. In this pursuit, he unequivocally succeeds. The collection not only resonates deeply with those who share similar immigrant experiences but acts as a universal narrative that touches the core of human existence. Chan’s honest, almost autobiographical portrayal of the difficulties of change, coupled with his poetic muscle and literary prowess, creates a powerful and evocative reading experience.”
—Jamie Lam, High school student, Review in liturgy of ink

“going home comes highly recommended, including by Rowan Williams himself. It’s a series of vignettes, scenes where the speaker — presumably Jonathan himself — offers words that evoke images that open up the possibility that this place, and that other place, and perhaps here too, is home. As I read along, I found familiar characters appearing: Wendell Berry, Li-Young Lee, Kwame Appiah, Lulu Wang.

These are Chan’s conversation partners in what becomes clear is a kind of natural theology. From these environments emerges a view of God. It leads to church. Church leads to letters. Letters evoke scripture.”
—Justin Tse, Assistant Professor of Religion and Culture, Singapore Management University

”[Jonathan Chan’s] debut collection „going home“ was shortlisted this year for the Singapore Literature Prize, it „contemplates intercultural and migrant identities“ and „celebrate the innovations of diaspora“. The poems in it, which sometimes work quite spatial, has been described as „a mapping of the emotional landscapes of a family from Seoul to Hong Kong, from Kuala Lumpur to New York–with Singapore as epicentre.“”
—Introduction at poesiefestival berlin 2024.