top of page
This site was designed with the
.com
website builder. Create your website today.Start Now
Pandan Weekly Icon.png

Pandan Weekly

an email series promoting one hearty,

bite-sized piece from Asia or the diaspora every week

WORK OF THE WEEK

Medieval Romance

Kwan Ann Tan

First published in Dark Horse Magazine in June 2021.

​

From the author:

Back in 2021, I was studying for a master’s degree in medieval literature, and wrote this poem after one of the weirdest tutorials of my life where fellow students complained how they were being so oppressed because “now everything is about race” ... in an elective the only two people who were non-white in our entire course had chosen to take. 

00:00 / 01:45

This is a romance. A messenger rides against a backdrop
of moonlit sand on an Arabian steed. The finest horses brought
back from the Crusades as foals and broken in on British soil. 
Or would you prefer Anglo-Saxon? Maybe  
this is an Anglo-Norman romance.  
Who the fuck cares?  
Because we are now headed to the castle, built on the backs
of British stones, gilded with emeralds from India, rubies
from Myanmar, a foreign enemy guarding against  
more immediate enemies.  
Anyway, we cross the drawbridge. We follow the messenger
through halls draped with tapestries woven with silk  
from Spain. Into the great hall, where the king  
and all his merry knights are feasting.  
There are enough spices in the stews, soups, roasts,  
plundered, robbed, ripped,  
from Malacca, the Maluku islands, Cathay.  
Spices that their descendants,  
five hundred years later, would choke on.  
So much for tempering the humours. Anyway, the messenger
calls them to war—the Pope, again. He has too many men
who are restless, causing trouble in the capital.  
The women pretend to cry but thank fuck for that because
No men means no children, no children means no dying in childbirth
despite the Trotula, even all the skill of Ibn Sina cannot change
this fate. Across the sea, men bleed. Men die. They call it
a crusade, they call this land holy. When they are tired
they rake the land for treasure, gold, silk, spice. Souvenirs
stained with salt tears, bled dry of lustre, of any kindness.
When the Islamic princess boards a foreign ship,  
she recoils from the hands of her white saviour,  
says goodbye to the only home  
she has ever known: this is not submission,  
this is survival.

​

_________________

Kwan Ann Tan is a writer from Malaysia. Her work has previously been published in The Offing, Joyland Magazine, and Sine Theta Magazine, amongst others. You can find her at kwananntan.carrd.co or on Twitter: @KwanAnnTan.

​

Did you enjoy this piece? If you’d like to send the author a tip, you can do so via PayPal.

Thank you for reading!

 

Pandan Weekly is a weekly email series produced by SEA Lit Circle, a community of writers and readers from Southeast Asia and the diaspora. At SEA Lit Circle, we inspire each other to write fresh, compelling work that’s true to ourselves, and we encourage each other to read and be more open to new works, stories, and perspectives within and beyond the region.

Subscribe to Pandan Weekly’s newsletter by leaving your email below.

Thanks for subscribing!

Submit to Pandan Weekly
(subs closed!)

Deadline: 28 February 2023

​

Pandan Weekly is a weekly email series and website promoting hearty bite-sized writing from Asia and the diaspora. We want writers to share the stories behind their stories, and for readers to have a deeper appreciation of the works by understanding the authors’ perspectives.

 

Each work comes with a note from the author, who may share their writing process, creative choices, intentions, and more. Some pieces may also come with writeups from the journal they were published in (or an editor thereof). All texts are accompanied by audio recordings to spotlight each author’s voice.

 

Submissions are open year-round. Currently, we only accept pieces published in literary journals, magazines, anthologies, and collections, including works from now-defunct publications. (Yes, student-run publications are included too!) We want your prose, written and spoken poetry, comics, and English translations of your local literature. See genre-specific guidelines below.

​

Please be sure you hold all the rights to your work prior to submitting it to Pandan Weekly. If you’re unsure, you can check with the publication’s submission guidelines or editors.

​

If you have any questions, email us at sealitcircle@gmail.com

​

Fiction

  • Submit 1 work. Please wait until you hear back before submitting another.

  • Your published piece can be up to 2,000 words long. Submit your piece in .doc or .docx. If your piece experiments with formatting, please submit the PDF version. (If you’re a member of SEA Lit Circle, you can submit up to 3,000 words.)

  • Your writeup about the piece should not be longer than 300 words.

  • Words from the publication about your piece are more than welcome. These can be tweets, other social media posts, or appraisals in the acceptance email; if you’d like, you may request a blurb from the publication.

  • If applicable, please also include content warnings.

  • Name of publication

  • Date your work was published (you can give the month + year if you don’t have the day)

  • Audio recording of you reading your work. Files should be in mp3, FLAC, WMA, or wav formats. Begin by stating the title of your work and your name. You can read an excerpt if your piece is fairly long.

  • Your third-person bio, maximum 100 words.

  • You may submit a piece in a language other than English, but please provide an English translation.

  • Submit all requirements to this Google Form.

​

Essay/Nonfiction

  • Submit 1 work. Please wait until you hear back before submitting another.

  • Your published piece can be up to 2,000 words long. Submit your piece in .doc or .docx. If your piece experiments with formatting, please submit the PDF version. (If you’re a member of SEA Lit Circle, you can submit up to 3,000 words.)

  • Your writeup about the piece should not be longer than 300 words.

  • Words from the publication about your piece are more than welcome. These can be tweets, other social media posts, or appraisals in the acceptance email; if you’d like, you may request a blurb from the publication.

  • If applicable, please also include content warnings.

  • Name of publication

  • Date your work was published (you can give the month + year if you don’t have the day)

  • Audio recording of you reading your work. Files should be in mp3, FLAC, WMA, or wav formats. Begin by stating the title of your work and your name. You can read an excerpt if your piece is fairly long.

  • Your third-person bio, maximum 100 words.

  • You may submit a piece in a language other than English, but please provide an English translation.

  • Submit all requirements to this Google Form.

​

Poetry

  • Submit 1 work. Please wait until you hear back before submitting another.

  • If your piece experiments with formatting, please submit the PDF version.

  • Your writeup about the piece should not be longer than 300 words.

  • Words from the publication about your piece are more than welcome. These can be tweets, other social media posts, or appraisals in the acceptance email; if you’d like, you may request a blurb from the publication.

  • If applicable, please also include content warnings.

  • Name of publication

  • Date your work was published (you can give the month + year if you don’t have the day)

  • Audio recording of you reading your work. Files should be in mp3, FLAC, WMA, or wav formats. Begin by stating the title of your work and your name.

  • Your third-person bio, maximum 100 words.

  • You may submit a piece in a language other than English, but please provide an English translation.

  • Submit all requirements to this Google Form.

​

Spoken Word

  • Submit 1 work. Please wait until you hear back before submitting another.

  • Your writeup about the piece should not be longer than 300 words.

  • Words from the publication about your piece are more than welcome. These can be tweets, other social media posts, or appraisals in the acceptance email; if you’d like, you may request a blurb from the publication.

  • If any, please also include content warnings.

  • Name of publication

  • Date your work was published (you can give the month + year if you don’t have the day)

  • Audio recording of you reading your work. Files should be in mp3, FLAC, WMA, or wav formats. Begin by stating the title of your work and your name. You may submit a video instead to show your overall performance of the piece.

  • Your third-person bio, maximum 100 words.

  • Submit all requirements to this Google Form.

​

Comics

  • Submit 1 work. Please wait until you hear back before submitting another.

  • Your comic should have no more than 64 panels. Submit your piece as a PDF.

  • Your writeup about the piece should not be longer than 300 words.

  • Words from the publication about your piece are more than welcome. These can be tweets, other social media posts, or appraisals in the acceptance email; if you’d like, you may request a blurb from the publication.

  • If any, please also include content warnings.

  • Name of publication

  • Date your work was published (you can give the month + year if you don’t have the day)

  • Your third-person bio, maximum 100 words.

  • You may submit a piece in a language other than English, but please provide an English translation.

  • Submit all requirements to this Google Form.

​

English Translations

  • Link to the work in its original language (if not available, please give the title and the author)

  • Submit 1 work. Please wait until you hear back to submit another.

  • Your published translation can be up to 2,000 words long. Submit your piece in .doc or .docx. If your piece experiments with formatting, please submit the PDF version. (If you’re a member of SEA Lit Circle, you can submit up to 3,000 words.)

  • Your writeup about the piece should not be longer than 300 words.

  • Words from the publication about your piece are more than welcome. These can be tweets, other social media posts, or appraisals in the acceptance email; if you’d like you may request a blurb from the publication.

  • If any, please also include content warnings.

  • Name of publication

  • Date your work was published (you can give the month + year if you don’t have the day)

  • Audio recording of you reading your work. Files should be in mp3, FLAC, WMA, or wav formats. Begin by stating the title of your work and your name. You can read an excerpt if the piece is fairly long.

  • Your third-person bio, maximum 100 words.

  • Submit all requirements to this Google Form.

bottom of page