By Madeleine Lee

Madeleine Lee (RGS, 1978), is an investment manager who also writes poetry and short stories about everyday things which we often fail to see in our busy lives. She has amassed many poems on trees, insects, fungi and things she sees on nature walks and the meaning therein.

curlers

regular morning at the reservoir
a sudden smell
gnawing from the farthest reach
an image of my mother
in her thirties by her dresser
the sight of hairbrushes and hairpins
the scent of helene curtis hair net spray
the thick cloying smell of her curlers
a sudden chill strew the morning with
guileless ivory blossoms on the jungle floor
shaped like teeth from a prehistoric rodent skull

synaesthesia 2008

brackets

i     anteater
today’s brackets
are chocolate brown
feasting on paler log
pretending to be a pangolin
in search of safety
cheering ever so slightly

ii     ants
there in front
left of centre
in their onward journey
to escape the sandwich worker
ant class on ward to a vanishing point

4th May 2013

_MG_0142Madeleine has published six books of poetry. The first four are published by First Fruits Publications: a single headlamp (2003) and fifty three/zero three (2004), y grec (co-written with Eleanor Wong, 2005) and synaesthesia (2008). Her fifth collection, pantone 125, was published by Math Paper Press in 2012. The latest collection, one point six one eight, was published this year and is her first foray with Ethos Books.

She is currently working with Enoch Ng to translate her work into Chinese. Madeleine has read at poetry festivals in Singapore and around the world, in particular, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Palembang, Adelaide, Melbourne, Ubud and Taipei. Her poems have appeared in numerous anthologies and have been translated into Bahasa Indonesian and Chinese.