School of Creative
Industries
BA(Hons) Arts Management
“Based on justice & equality”: Understanding the effect of Singapore's censorship regulations and policies on LGBTQ writers
This paper seeks to understand the impact of Singapore’s censorship policies on LGBTQ writers, in particular LGBTQ poets. This will be done through looking at the history of locally published LGBTQ poetry works and their writers, as well as the policies and regulations that may have affected their publishing and any censorship that they may have faced. This paper will aim to analyse the relationships between queer poetry and art, censorship policies and regulations, and changing societal attitudes, and how the latter may or may not be a factor in affecting the former. In particular, the research aims to do this by exploring the possible threads of the decolonisation of Singapore’s censorship policies and regulatory frameworks through the creative works of LGBTQ writers.
Keywords: LGBTQ, queer, Singapore poets, LGBT Singapore, Singapore censorship, arts censorship, decolonisation
Subtopics: decolonisation, the state and queerness, arts censorship
Tang Hui Min Seraphina
Seraphina is an aspiring project manager, an occasional poet and a writer across digital platforms. She has performed at poetry open mic events including Spoke & Bird, destination:INK and the Singapore Writers Festival. Her poems have been published in various anthologies and online journals, including EXHALE: an anthology, and Eunoia Review.
She has assisted in the coordination and programming of the 3rd Singapore Literature Conference and Poetry Festival (2021), and hopes to make local literature and poetry more accessible to the public, especially the youth.
When not seeking out the best cocktail bars and eateries for her day job as an editorial writer, Seraphina can be found petting neighbourhood cats and wandering through library aisles.