LYRIC ESSAYS

BY THE AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR

​

Hermitage

of Dreamers

“The journey is no less than a quest for

enlightenment, for oneness with a

sacred realm. The effect is touching,

provocative, and beautiful.”

​

Thaddeus Rutkowski

​

​

“Masterfully demonstrates how the space

between art and divinity collapses

in our search for solace.”

Sueyeun Juliette Lee 

Desmond Kon’s catholic

taste, generous spirit, and

love of great writing

is everywhere evident

in this wild, risky,

heartfelt book.

MICHAEL RYAN, 

RECIPIENT OF THE KINGSLEY TUFTS POETRY AWARD

...a rapacious literary transformer. His own literary output has been prodigious, varied, playful, unapologetically intellectual, and out-there.

YEOW KAI CHAI,

DIRECTOR OF THE

SINGAPORE WRITERS FESTIVAL

It is a curling of poetic weight: each line pushes lactic acid through our muscles into euphoria—the euphoria of the lyric—and Kon is a champion power lifter.

LILY HOANG,

RECIPIENT OF THE

PEN BEYOND MARGINS AWARD

2019

I write poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, journalism, and weird hybrid thingamajigs in between. My work has largely been read as poststructuralist, with my penchant for lyric compression, irony, extended metaphor, kitsch, absurdity, and surrealism. I absolutely love playing with language, especially language that interrogates how meaning is made. I like to write about

the impossibility of language, to explore what remains unsayable and inexpressible. I teach too, edit lots, do readings, and organise literary events. I am excited by new ideas and happenings in philosophy, art, literature, anthropology, etc. When I can find the time, I return to a bit of drawing and sculpting. For most part, I try to preserve an unhurried, quiet hermitic life.