‘Between Stations’ by Kim Cheng Boey

launched by John Hughes at Gleebooks
in Sydney on Sunday 20 September

'Between Stations' published by Giramondo

Kim Cheng Boey was born in Singapore and migrated to Australia in 1997. He is a prize-winning poet with four published collections,and a senior lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Newcastle.

For Kim Cheng Boey 'between stations' describes the state of the migrant writer,living between his place of birth, his adopted country, and the wider world;between the past and the present; between the city he is in, and those that
live in his memory.

The book traces the author's travels through India, China, Egypt and Morocco, during the year of wandering between his departure from his native Singapore, and the making of his new home in Australia. In each place he visits, the cosmopolitan mix of peoples, the markets and crossroads, the overlays of history and religion, remind him of his old city, now demolished, and of his gambler father, who would return after long absences to walk with him down
the vanished arcades and alleys, past the shophouses and hawkers' stalls.

Boey's essays capture a historic moment in the modernisation of the Asian city; they chronicle the breakup and the resilience of the family; they trace his formation as a poet.