"World of all Worlds", Don Shiau
Bored of the laser wars,
we throw on our silversuits,
hotwire a spacehawk,
and steal into the next system.
Starfields streak past our bodies;
a dance of celestial rain.
No-one knows. We’ll be back
before roll call.
Five months later,
we awake on Earth
in the same ward.
Over beeps and bruised breaths
you tell me what you remember.
Memories wake in my skin
as I say—yes, yes
it was all true.
A forest planet—all forest; a sand
planet, all sand; fire for fire, ice for ice.
We broke ironbread with a bear-
as-turtle, downed logmilk with a fox-as-human.
We evaded gatorillas, rhinobirds,
rescued buttercats—touched whole worlds
somehow made only of one thing;
creatures made only of two.
Maybe:
there is really nothing more
in the cosmos, nothing to dream of
but what we already know, crossed
in different ways.
If so, I’d rather cross with you
and make something new.
Right here, in this world
of all worlds.
Outside, a battle booms absently.
Bored of the cyberwards,
we pull out our needles,
kick down the doors
and run.
/ Don Shiau's work and hobbies have always involved words – be they interviews, reviews, social media copy, speeches, scripts, or lyrics. He is active in Singapore’s online poetry and spoken-word communities, and was featured in Singapore Writers Festival 2022. He also writes and performs garage rock as phfew.
/ COMMENTARY
“My Fantastic Prompt, designed to promote the notion of speculative poetry, also yielded two favourites. Don Shiau’s “World of All Worlds” uses space opera as an extended metaphor to convey both the ennui of middle age—with a sudden, final turn, offering hope, even an imperative, for liberation.”
/ Q&A
What inspired you to write this poem?
It’s a thought experiment. I’m quite taken by the fact that so much space fiction is simply an extrapolation of what exists on Earth. We often see planets with only one kind of biome and one or two major species, and aliens with design cues from animals. I get why this is so from a storytelling perspective, but what if the reason is because all the complexity of the universe is right here? I don’t necessarily believe that, but the idea is intriguing enough to me that I ran with it.
I also like the idea that a limited life doesn’t have to be a lesser one. Maybe we don’t need to leave Earth to see everything. Maybe we don’t need to FOMO our way through every country and hobby to have a full life. Maybe the richness of our experience depends on how we process what we have, in the time we have.
How has writing for SingPoWriMo impacted you as a poet?
It opened my mind to what counts as poetry. Before my first SingPoWriMo, what I knew of poetry was quite formal and academic — basically what I learned in school two decades earlier. In SingPoWriMo, there are so many different energies to feed off. It’s given me so many more tools to play with, and helped me figure out what my own poetic voice is.
What would you say to someone thinking about taking part in the next SingPoWriMo?
Absolutely do it. There are three reasons you may be hesitating: you aren’t confident enough to post your work online, and/or you feel a little intimidated by all the pre-existing friendships in the group, and/or you’re young and don’t use Facebook. To which I say: the first two are overthinking, and the third is an excuse. Dive in; it’s a safe space. Make sure to tell other participants what works in their poems, because you get as much as you give. Make friends, meet them, go to poetry events together, and keep writing.