Utterly Changed is a collection of creative writings by winners of a writing competition organised by The Substation in 2018. Entries had to respond to what local heritage means to them with reference to poet Boey Kim Cheng‘s 1996 piece entitled Change Alley.
The publication features winning entries from Diana Rahim, Max Pasakorn, Choo Rui Zhi, Joshua Lim, Serene Goh-Wong, Tan Min Yi, Anurak Saelaow and Carissa Cheow.
The concept for the publication was developed out of the fact that Change Alley was a poem that made reference to William Butler Yeats’ Easter (1916), while the writers who submitted to Utterly Changed responded to Change Alley which, in turn, referenced to a time in Singapore gone by.
The cover design and the title pages of each writing feature a vertical line, scored down the middle of the page. This allows for pages to be folded half across the short side of the page, much like how one might reference information from an earlier page by folding it down.
To capture the fleeting nature of time and how memories of the past seem to fade away in the face of the rapidly changing urban landscape of Singapore, a colour that is reminiscent of the yellowing pages of a book reinforces the importance of writing as part of capturing both personal memories and also the memories of this ever-changing city.
