Singapore's Fiction Famine

One of the great conundrums of local writing - how come Singapore produces so many excellent poets but comparatively few writers of fiction? And why does that situation seem to be reversed in Malaysia? Of course it is something of an oversimplification, but on Eric Forbes' blog, poet Ng Yi-Sheng suggests some reasons :

... the easy answer is that poems take less time to write. Singapore’s a busy country. Most of us have day jobs; those of us still in school often have night tuition. It’s hard to carve out a chunk of time to write the Great Singapore Novel, or even a full-length play. It’s much easier to scribble out a poem on the bus in between stations, or while waiting for our systems to defrag.

Another answer is that communities of poets have developed. The seminal moment for this was the Singapore Literature Prize in 1995, which allowed unpublished poetry manuscripts. The official victor was Roger Jenkins’s From the Belly of the Carp, which has faded into literary obscurity, but the runners-up were a band of 20- and 30-somethings, eager and determined to develop Singapore literature anew.

The Class of ’95, as they call themselves, were Alvin Pang, Aaron Lee, Boey Kim Cheng, Yong Shu Hoong and Heng Siok Tian. They organised readings, lobbied bookshops to stock their works, travelled overseas for literary festivals and put together grand, ambitious anthologies (e.g. No Other City, a collection of urban poetry where names of poets were relegated to the index, so that laureates and neophytes rubbed shoulders to form a polyphonic national epic).

I was lucky enough to be present in those early years: an awkward, closeted schoolboy, chanting my free verse at Chijmes, the old National Library, Borders and the old MPH bookshop. What was really great was that these guys were approachable and inclusive, paying for our dinners at mid-priced Indonesian restaurants while they discussed politics and culture, bringing us along on overnight train rides as part of poetry delegations to Kuala Lumpur. Without their encouragement, I might never have dared to print my verse.

And today, it’s the same story. The Class of ’95 and the poets who followed them continue to be the crusaders of homegrown lit. There’s Cyril Wong and Toh Hsien Min, who run online literary journals Softblow and Quarterly Literary Review of Singapore respectively. There’s Chris Mooney-Singh, who hosts poetry slams and coaches students in performance poetry. There’s Enoch Ng, a Chinese-language poet, who cranks out award-winning volumes of verse in Mandarin and English from his one-man publishing house, Firstfruits.

Poetry in Singapore is alive and well, not just because of our preference for bite-sized creations, but because poets are working hard to make themselves heard. Thus, we’ve got communities, not only of writers, but also of readers, willing to support us as well as the newer poets who emerge year after year.

He makes the point though that the media in Singapore largely ignore the poets (but were very keen to pick up on short story writers Wena Poon and O Thiam Chin after the Singapore Literary Festival).

But, he says, he can't think of :

... a single other Singaporean fiction writer who’s emerged and published in the 2000s ... it's a fiction famine ...

He reckons though that there is hope for the future :

The literary agency Jacaranda Press is actively seeking out Singapore fiction for a global market. There’s a new grant from the National Arts Council called the Arts Creation Fund, supplying enough cash for people to actually to take a long-term break from their jobs and churn out a humongous tome. November has even been declared a NaNoWriMo: National Novel Writing Month, an exercise wherein participants are committed to churning out 50,000 words of fiction in 30 days. ... Not surprisingly, the Class of ’95 has also leapt to the rescue. Poet Alvin Pang has teamed up with The British Council in Singapore to set up a week-long writers’ retreat on the island of Pulau Ubin, with novelist coaches from the UK’s Arvon Foundation to goad us into writing fiction. I attended the retreat myself in October 2009, one of 12 participants gathering in pondoks with laptops and notepaper, five of whom were fellow poets. I’ve borne witness to the workshops, and I can assure that there’s some great prose bundled up in some of us, waiting for a moment to break free.

(This piece will be appearing in the next edition of MPH's Quill magazine.)

Wena and Co for Southbank

It was very nice to hear this morning (via Twitter) that Singaporean author Wena Poon is going to be appearing with novelist Isa Kamari (left) and Edwin Thumboo at Level 5 Function Room at the Southbank centre in London on Monday 28 September 2009, 7.45pm. The event is called Writing Singapore and here is the blurb about it :

In a first for Southbank Centre, we welcome a group of Singaporean writers to read from their work and share insights about the literary culture of their nation. Isa Kamari is an experimental novelist and playwright whose most recent work is Tawassul (Nearness). Wena Poon writes from the diaspora experience of living in the US. Her fiction looks at Singaporean and American life in her latest novel Lions in Winter. Edwin Thumboo is a leading figure in Singaporean poetry, who edited some of the earliest anthologies of Singaporean and Malaysian literature in English.

Do hope some of you who are living in London will be able to make it. I wish I could be there!

Softblow's New Home, QLRS' Latest Edition

Singaporean poet Cyril Wong wrote to say that SOFTBLOW Poetry Journal is back at a new location :

This journal was located previously at softblow.com. Unfortunately, as some past readers might already know, we were undermined by our web hosting company which threatened to keep us from entering and editing the domain if we did not pay additional sums of money (more than previously agreed) for the official purpose of maintaining a stable site. As none of us had the money to sue, we let the first site and domain be taken away from us.

After softblow.com was down, we received a flood of emails from readers who offered to help with ways of fixing the problem. Then with the help and encouragement of Alvin Pang, a Singaporean poet whose work has been featured in the former version of this journal, we were able to retrieve the works of close to everyone who has ever been featured in SOFTBLOW.

SOFTBLOW has been an online home for contemporary poetry from all over the world since Sep. 2004, featuring writers such as Bernadette Mayer, Jenny Boully, Jordie Albiston, Boey Kim Cheng and Wong Phui Nam, among numerous others. From Nov. 2009, we will have a new selection/editorial team comprising of Eric Low, Gwee Li Sui, Jason Wee and Christopher Ujine Ong.

SOFTBLOW is ad free. Poets will not be remunerated for having their works featured here. This journal will be updated at the start of every month, (re)starting on 1 Nov. 2009. Featured poets will eventually be placed in our Archive to make room for the new poets. If you have been featured in SOFTBLOW but your work does not appear in our Archive, please let us know.

To submit, simply paste 4-6 poems with a short bio. in the body of an email and send it to the editor@softblow.org. Copyrights revert to the authors upon publication. All work published is with their expressed consent.

Thank you for your patience for the time in which SOFTBLOW has been offline and for your offers to help. We are happy to be back and glad for your continued support once more. And if you are on Facebook, you can also join this page for future updates on the journal.

best regards,
SOFTBLOW team

And while we're thinking about Singaporean Literary journals, do check out the latest edition of QLRS. I'm thrilled to bits because it has a piece by my friend Damyanti Ghosh. (Check out her excellent blog, with much of writing here.)

So, writers, these are places to send your own work.

Literary Singapore

When I went down to Singapore last week for the talk at The Arts House with Wena Poon, one of the best things about the trip was meeting writers and book lovers.

Among them was one of my Facebook buddies, blogger Jason Lundberg, who writes here about the event (and echoes my own feelings about it) and also about Tash Aw's Singapore book launch.

Other lovely literary people I had a chance to meet - R Ramachandran of the Singapore Book Council; poet, playwright, novelist Robert Yeo; and poet Alvin Pang.

Afterwards a group of us went to an excellent restaurant called Charcoal for dinner, and there was much talk about cross-causeway exchanges ...

Thumboo Talk and Reading

Professor Quayum has just sent me information of a couple of events taking place at the International Islamic University to which all of you are invited (and please pass the information on).

The first is a public lecture by Dell Visiting Professor, Edwin Thumboo (who is sometimes described as Singapore's unofficial poet laureate!) :

Tilting Paradigms: Creativity in Englishes

Abstract: The decision to write poems, plays, short stories and novels is a personal one. If we are bi- or tri- lingual by the time we decide, it is our main – or strongest – language that chooses us. Few have the ability to create in two languages, let alone three; it is difficult enough in one. For the ex-colonial, it is either the language of one’s race or the language of former colonisers. If we chose English, as many have, we face a number of challenges. What English and why? What shapes the substance of our experience behind our writing, and to what extent? And how is that substance influenced by the history and the politics of national recovery and nation formation? Issues such as those arising from the fact that English is the leading international language, the influence of literary traditions and content of other languages, and the relationship between the various national literatures, will be noted as well as discussed in terms of their creative and critical implications. The language in this case is English and the focus is on poetry.

DATE: 12 AUGUST 2009
TIME: 10 AM – 12 NOON
VENUE: HS SEMINAR ROOM, IIU

Professor Edwin Thumboo is a distinguished poet and academic who has been teaching at the National University of Singapore (NUS) for over forty years. His publications include six volumes of poetry, two collections of nursery rhymes, over twenty academic books, and articles in leading literary journals around the world. He has received several literary awards including the Singapore National Award for poetry (1978, 1980 and 1994), the Southeast Asia Write Award (1979), the Singapore Cultural Medallion (1980), the ASEAN Cultural and Communication Award in Literature (1987), and the Raja Rao Award (2002). Currently an Emeritus Professor, Professor Thumboo was the Head of the Department of English Language and Literature, NUS, for sixteen years (1977-1993) and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences for eleven years (1980-1991).

The second is a poetry reading. (Click on the poster to read the details.)

Passionate Poet from Straightlaced Singapore

Oh, okay. I could resist lifting Ishaan Tharoor's headline from his article about Cyril Wong in Time magazine (Asia edition):

It is one of the more delicious workings of karma that Singapore, which criminalizes homosexuality, should have as its leading young poet an openly gay man. But while Cyril Wong relishes waving "a purple flag" in socially conservative faces, his work expands beyond simple sexuality — being "just a gay poet," as he puts it — to embrace themes of love, alienation and human relationships of all kinds. His latest volume of verse, Tilting Our Plates to Catch the Light , is due to be published this month, hopefully to burnish further the international reputation that the previous five collections have established for him.

Wong, 30, burst onto the scene in 2000, with Squatting Quietly. It was, like many debut collections, a document of rebellion — in this case, against the values of his Christian, middle-class Chinese upbringing, and the social alienation that his sexuality entailed. Much of the latter had been brought into stark relief during 2 1/2 years of national military service, during which, he jokes, he was "too campy in the camp." His natural levity masks the loneliness and vulnerability he felt in the barracks. But ultimately it was poetry, rather than humor, that gave Wong a means of working through the frustrations driving him, at times, to a suicidal state of mind. "It helped me wash my dirty linen in public," he says.

You can read the rest of the article here.

The soft launch of Cyril's Tilting Our Plates to Catch the Light will be held at The Arts House at 8p.m. tomorrow.

How to Cook a Wolf

I nicked this from Sharanya. (Please click to enlarge.) She's heading down South to read alongside Singaporean poets and you can read more about it on her blog.

Tikam-Tikam Texts

As I said the other day, my Merdeka substitute for flag waving was to go along and see Second Link at the Actor's Studio, Bangsar.

Without the emotional fug of the Litfest (the evening it was performed at Zouk I had reached meltdown point), this time I could relax and fully enjoy Riding the Nice Bus which formed the first half of the show. The Malaysian cast Fahmi Fadzil, Anne James, Edwin Sumon, Sukania Venugopal, and Reza Zainal Abidin moved seamlessly from story to story, making us laugh, plunging us into aching sadness. The show features pieces from Singapore's most important writers including Edwin Thumboo, Suchen Christine Lim, Alfian Sa'at, Felix Cheong, Eleanor Wong and Yong Shu Hoong.

Because I really hadn't known much about how our unlooked for Singaporean gift actually came into being, I enjoyed reading in the programme notes how the original "curators" of the show, Alvin Pang and Madeleine Lee approached director Krishen Jit for help with a "produced reading" for the festival:

"Performed literature," he admonished over lunch, "is a genre of its own and well known in other countries. You'd do well to use the correct term from now on."

Yes sir!

But I must confess that I preferred the second half performance Tikam Tikam, where Malaysian texts were performed by the five Singaporean actors. It was the variety of texts I think that made the difference - not just from literary sources, but from interviews, folk tales, and articles and documents - and even from An Introduction to the Constitution of Malaysia!

The exact order of the texts (apart from the beginning and the ending) varies from performance to performance, based on a game of chance (Tikam-Tikam) played with the audience.

The Singaporean cast, Gani Abdul Karim, Lim Yu-Beng, Jonathan Lim, Neo Swee Lim and Karen Tan were excellent in bringing the very diverse extracts to life in a really entertaining way. Little moments, little snapshots of Malaysian life and culture, were randomly thrown to the audience.

The production has made me realise how much quality local literature is out there, and how neglected it is outside the university departments. And how much of it seems not to be available in the bookshops! (My biblioheart weeps for the copy of Adibah Amin's magical collection of essays As I Was Passing, which I lent to a student years ago, and never got back.)

It was also a lesson in the kind of cooperation that's possible between the two neighbouring countries. And between the members of a multi-ethnic cast.

Texts Across the Causeway

Anyone interested in the literature of Malaysia and Singapore shouldn't miss the forthcoming performance of Second Link by Wild Rice at Actor's Studio, Bangsar.

Let's go back in time a couple of years.

I was helping Mr. Raman to organise the KL Litfest. My job was to coordinate the whole kaboodle, which meant keeping in contact with all the writers and deciding on how to fit everyone into the programme and keep them happy. (Not at all easy!)*

I was in contact with the Singapore contingent through poet Alvin Pang. I slotted the Singaporean poets into the programme and was extremely pleased when Alvin told me that Singapore Arts Council wanted to sponsor an evening event of readings. We put our heads together about the venue and decided we could use the Renaissance ballroom.

Then, just three weeks or so before the Litfest, when the planning was thankfully over (after much sweat and buckets of tears) and the programme had gone to print, Alvin announced that there had been a slight change of plan.

The Singaporean contribution would not simply be readings, but a full blown theatre production directed by none other than the great Krishen Jit. Could we find a theatre for it? I went into full-blown panic mode, phoning round every venue I could think of. All fully booked. Fortunately, the folks at the Singapore High Commission were able to think outside the box and came up with a brilliant alternative: the coolest venue in town, nightclub Zouk.

Now shame on me for doubting that Krishen and his team could come up with the goods in such a short time frame!

The production called Riding the Nice Bus was easily one of the highlights of the entire festival. It was a unique cross-causeway collaboration between the two countries which share so much history, yet seem artistically divided by the causeway. The texts (lifted from plays, fiction and poetry) paid homage to the history of Singaporean writing and were brilliantly chosen by curator Eleanor Wong - the kind of stuff that slaps you right between the eyes. A Malaysian cast performed the whole thing seamlessly. The venue was perfect. (Featured writers and performers listed here.)

Afterwards, I had tears in my eyes as I thanked Krishen (seated at the bar, looking pretty enigmatic) for all his hard work. I could have hugged him, actually, for giving us such an amazing and unlooked for gift for our festival. It was the first and only time I got a chance to talk to this great man, although I had seen him at performances of his plays previously. He passed away suddenly in April 2005.

I wish I had gone down to the Singapore Arts Festival last year (still kicking myself!) because among other things I would like to have seen Riding the Nice Bus performed again - but this time alongside Tikam-tikam: Malaysian Roulette, directed by Singaporean Ivan Heng, featuring Malaysian writings, and performed by a Singaporean cast. (Jerome Kugan gives and excellent account of both festival and performance here.)

The upcoming performance at Actor's Studio merges both productions and brings together more than 50 celebrated texts and ten actors, from both sides of the causeway.

It opens 30th August and runs till 3rd September with tickets at just RM49 on the first two nights. I bought my ticket for 31st because I can't think of a better way to celebrate Merdeka Day!**

* This is what organising the programme for the festival felt like. So many egos to accomodate! The stories I could tell but won't, unless in my autobigraphy published posthumously!
**Though as a citizen of your former colonising power should I be celebrating??

Closet

Writers so often face a dilemma when wondering how much of themselves, their inner feelings to reveal in their work. "If I write this, will people be shocked? Will they think less of me if they know who I truly am inside?"

Too often we self-censor. A brilliant piece of writing stays within the desk drawer because it is too risky. Because it reveals too many secrets. And how sad because it might just be one of the strongest things we've ever written, torn from the heart.

Local poet Leong Liew Geok lets a neglected poem hidden in a desk drawer have ITS say!

Closet poem

To fret my life in a drawer for papers -
Lying low because you think me
Too naughty, too wicked to show
Myself in public. Though whole
In face limb, torso, you shun me
And shut me out. There's more to you
Than meets their eye. Admit it:
The nakedness of what you
Scrawl within scares you away.
For each part shaped and deserted,
You owe me some share of what you own.
You know I'm yours; unlock my dark
or burn me up, you coward;
I live for light.