Courtesy of Namiko Chan, 2002Take The Red Pill - Today Newspaper
One Track Vision Becomes Poetry In Motion - The Straits Times, Life!
Poems Come Into Existence - The Straits Times, Life!
Out In The City - The Edge, Singapore
Old Instrument Does Not Play Second Fiddle - The Straits Times, Life!
The Twain Shall Meet - Strings Magazine, USA
A Down Under Poetry Date - The Straits Times, Life!
Poetry Gets Motion - Today Newspaper
Singapore poets debut at Edinburgh Book Festival - The Straits Times, Life!
Of the bitten path - The Straits Times, Life!
Performance poetry here to stay - Business Times
From thought to poem - Today Newspaper
Poetry for the masses - Today Newspaper
Confessions of a poet - The Sunday Times
Young Artist Award Article - Lianhe Zaobao
Poet Extraordinaire - Today Newspaper
Boost for S'pore Literature - The Straits Times
Poets in Motion - The Sunday Times
Poetry on the podium - Today Newspaper
Verse-Case Scenario - TimeOut Singapore
A fairy tale goes to press - The Straits Times, Life!
Baggage Check - SX News, Australia
A Passionate Poet from Straitlaced Singapore - TIME
TAKE THE RED PILL
by Yong Shu-Chiang in Today, Nov 1, 2002
In the film, The Matrix, the real world was merely an illusion, and most people who “lived” in it were none the wiser.
If you ask poet Cyril Wong most of us are like those people: We don’t think twice about out truths and our realities, they simply exist – they just are.
“People take it that life is meaningful and completely worth living,” he said. They often get stuck in routines like going to work everyday, without considering the meaning behind them. In his latest book, Below: Absence, Wong tries to provoke a different perspective on life, tackling how people accept its so-called truths and established principles.
“The book is about the different kinds of emptiness in life,” he said. “But they’re not all bad.”
“Absence can be a kind of focus; it’s how we create meaning out of the nothingness in everyday life.”
In ascribing meaning to lives, people tend to create certain truisms they can cling to. These sayings, which may not hold up on closer inspection, also get passed down from generation to generation.
For years, Wong’s parents have repeated sayings that form their beliefs without really thinking about them. If Wong were to ask them to explain their meaning, he’d get something along the lines of “it is because it just is” or “because it is wrong, so it is wrong.” Hence, he says, there’s an absence of meaning in what his parents say.
“People tend to repeat certain ‘truths’ to themselves that ring hollow,” he said. But if enough people believe the same “facts”, they held reinforce each other’s convictions, as if they’re in a support group.
An alternative perspective on things is nothing new for Wong who has written Squatting Quietly and The End Of His Orbit.
On the recurring theme of love in his writings, for instance, he says he likes to take aim at it from unpopular angles. “I look at it in new, more negative ways,” the 25-year-old said. “Ways people don’t really like to dwell on…Those who don’t question love often just see it in clichés.”
With his latest book, which he calls his most coherent work yet, Wong takes on a role not unlike The Matrix’s Morpheus.
At one point in the film, Morpheus offers a blue pill for people who prefer the status quo and a red pill for people who want to see the world in a different light.
“People should learn to view life with more irony,” Wong said. “Knowing that they’re following its conventions and doing it anyway, rather than just accepting things the way they are.”
In other words, open your eyes – and take the red pill.
Below: Absence will be out in bookstores in December.
ONE TRACK VISION BECOMES POETRY IN MOTION
by Shahida Ariff in The Straits Times, Life! Nov 16, 2002In his third book of poems, poet Cyril Wong asks that eternal question: What is the meaning of life?
And this time, he explores the theme not just in words but also in a short film made with film-maker Tania Sng.
Wong, 25, is launching his latest poetry collection, Below: Absence, at The Substation next Saturday. One Track Vision, a three-minute-plus film adapted from a poem of the same title in the book, will also be screened at the launch.
It premiered at the Singapore Shorts Film Festival last night.
Below: Absence comes on the heels of Wong's two earlier books - Squatting Quietly in 2000 and The End Of His Orbit last year.
While those two were an intimate look at the poet's personal relationships, Wong said that his latest effort is more philosophical, questioning the 'emptiness' behind the mundane, everyday things in life.
'The book explores things that we do and don't question,' he said. 'It's about finding meaning in our jobs, friendships and those things you do every day.'
True to the spirit of the book and One Track Vision, the film depicts a man going through the motions in a square room - waking up in the morning, brushing his teeth, making and eating lunch, and so on.
Producer and director Sng, 28, who owns production house Aquafire Productions, described it as a quiet film about every person and his idiosyncrasies.
The idea to turn poetry into moving images was suggested by Ms Wahyuni Hadi, The Substation's programme executive for film, when Wong approached her to discuss his book's launch.
Sng was a natural choice to helm the film, as her first film - No Home, No Woman, No One, No Love - was based on poetry written by women.
She and Wong then brainstormed their film's concept, and selected One Track Vision from Below: Absence as it reflected the overall feel of his work.
Wong has been described as a love poet, and Sng hopes this will come through in the film.
She said: "His works are very intimate and reflective, so hopefully the film gives a glimpse into what he's like as a writer.'
The launch of Below: Absence and the screening of One Track Vision will take place at The Substation Gallery next Saturday at 5.30 pm.
POEMS COME INTO EXISTENCE
by Clara Chow in The Straits Times, Life! Jul 21, 2003Homegrown poet Cyril Wong's poems have inspired theatre group, The Fun Stage's latest production, Existence.
But do not call it a marketing gimmick for the poetry collection, below: absence, which touches on the angst of living.
Written and directed by Benny Lim, 23, an undergraduate at the National University of Singapore's theatre studies department and artistic director of The Fun Stage, the play revolves around two young men who try to fill voids in their lives with their love for each other.
They are played by Lawrence Wong, 21, and Willy Lau, 24. They star in Channel 5's drama series, Moulmein High, and teen drama, Light Years, respectively.
If the plot sounds similar to movie director Wong Kar Wai's Happy Together, it is because the play's director was affected by the suicide of Hong Kong singer-actor Leslie Cheung.
The 46-year-old plunged to his death from a hotel window in April this year. He played one half of a gay couple in the 1997 film. Poet Wong says: "When Cheung died, the shock did not come immediately for me. It crept in slowly. And then you realise, oh my, this gay icon is no more."
He points out that the play is being staged, coincidentally, at a time when sections of Singapore society are abuzz with Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong's recent remarks on the civil service's employment of homosexual people, even in sensitive jobs.
"The word gay is being bantered about. And yet, Existence is a negative portrayal of homosexual life. It seems to say that being accepted by mainstream society doesn't mean that all of the problems faced by homosexual individuals will go away."
But rather than the well-worn theatrical theme of angry young men, the play features "jaded young men", says Lim. He chose to use 11 of Wong's poems in the play after he read the book in March. The poems' appeal lay in how they mirror the reality of life, he says. "One poem was about going to Johor Baru and eating nasi lemak there," he says of their down-to-earth quality.
Instead of merely getting the actors to recite the poems, he wove the lines into realistic dialogue, turned verses into long monologues and even translated entire poems into stage actions or a single, sensual look.
The poet, who laid down the rule that he did not want to be involved in the play-making process, says he was "traumatised" when he got a sneak peek of the finished 1 1/2-hour-long product.
"I was surprised by what they did to my poems," he explains. "I didn't expect it to be so meditative."
OUT IN THE CITY
by Felix Cheong in The Edge, Singapore, Jul 28 - Aug 3, 2003These are early days yet, but Singapore’s gay and lesbian community has, over the past year, been pushing the envelope in its bid for a voice in mainstream society.
Progressive though, is Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong's recent (and much quoted) remark in the July 7 issue of Time magazine, in an article, "The Lion in Winter": "So let it evolve, and in time the population will understand that some people are born that way. We are born this way and they are born that way, but they are like you and me."
A distinct marker for change, especially in Singapore's largely conservative climate, it represents hope for those who have had to endure setbacks till now. The gay activist group, People Like Us, saw its application to be registered as an organisation rejected by the government last year - but it is nevertheless making its presence felt, and is considering trying to register again.
On stage, we’re watching more works with strong homosexual content, such as the recent Wild Rice production of Invitation to Treat. Penned by well-known playwright Eleanor Wong, this trilogy turns the pages on the loves and trials of a lesbian lawyer and was commended by broadsheet The Straits Times for “pushing out of the closet issues that mainstream audiences are not used to facing”.
Similarly, two recent publications are bringing to the surface what has long been kept subterranean: the experience of transsexual women, 13 of them, in Leona Lo’s My Sisters, Their Stories, and issues of gay rights and identity in a collection of essays called People Like Us.
In sync with these developments is the stark and often sensual poetry of Cyril Wong. Though only 25 years old, the English honours graduate from the National University of Singapore has already made a name for himself as – in the words of a reviewer in The Straits Times – “the pre-eminent visionary love poet of our age”.
With three volumes of verse – Squatting Quietly (2000), The End of His Orbit (2001) and Below: Absence (2002) – that dwell on and delve into gay themes, Wong is also arguably the most outspoken gay writer in Singapore. And he’s concerned that “the gay scene here is opening up too quickly”.
“A lot of gay people are taking a lot of things for granted now,” he notes, “such as the ease with which [straight] people are accepting gay culture.” This blasé attitude, he’s quick to add, may inadvertently set the gay movement two steps back even as it takes one forward.
Sounding less like a man with a chip on his shoulder than one with an agenda to get off his chest, Wong also laments that People Like Us, which probably wouldn’t have seen print at all in the 1980s since it was a more conservative time then, is unfortunately being panned by “this current generation of fags”. To them, the book - groundbreaking though it may be in claiming political and cultural space for gays - reads dated and is really doing no more than dreg up issues seemingly dealt with and forgotten. “People are not appreciating the past enough,” sighs Wong, “and how far we gays had come from a more repressive past. That’s not to say it isn’t repressive now.”
Wong certainly knows the wounds of what it means to have come from and survived a repressive past. Even though he’s been “out” [slang for publicly admitting to be homosexual] since primary school, the former student of St. Patrick’s Secondary School says his family is still in denial about his sexuality. This is why many of his poems are fraught with confessional moments, of not being able to live up to, and live with, the expectations of his parents, particularly his father. The title poem from his second collection The End of His Orbit sums up the tension at the heart and thrust of his work:
I have learnt how to love
Even as father never did.
Everyday, he descended
Into the couch like a coffin
Into a hole in the ground.By turns acerbic and tender, ironic and meditative, Wong's poetry abides by his philosophy that he must always be "truly myself and not conform to any one behaviour". In his books, being marginalised for his homosexuality is not so much a crutch as a corner, an arm's length from which he can observe people in motion and emotion. "You start questioning why you’re an outsider," he explains, "why you're not the norm. And this question is the core of poetry. And the more you question, through poetry, the more you learn about life."
This honesty to face up to measured, tough questioning is, in Wong’s view, precisely what’s lacking in the gay scene at the moment. Like patterns of behaviour among straight people, “conformity and self-delusion” have ironically settled down to become the norm. “Gay people are too obsessed with forming images of themselves,” Wong comments wryly. “They can’t reflect on themselves or be reflexive enough to be ironic. They’re becoming more and more shallow. It didn’t used to be like this in the 1990s. But gay culture is now [so] formed and established that people don’t question [anymore].”
An accomplished soprano singer who has toured several countries with the Singapore Youth Choir in the late 1990s, Wong doesn’t see himself as a “martyr” for the gay cause. Indeed, he even goes so far as to deny he’s a gay poet.
“Personally, I hope to transcend that [label]... I want to be known as a poet. I want to be known by the strength of my poetry, to be known as one of the first few [writers] to deal with gay themes in Singapore.”
For the time being, Wong, who landed his current job as an arts administrator with The Substation after nine months of unemployment, says he’s putting poetry aside. After having published three books in rapid succession, between 2000 and 2002, he confesses he’s totally “burnt out. Nothing in the bank.”
But given the energy emanating from this feisty, opinionated young man, it probably won't be long before he delivers another book, from the vantage point of the gay, marginalised writer.
OLD INSTRUMENT DOES NOT PLAY SECOND FIDDLE
by Sandra Leong in The Straits Times, Life! Aug 28, 2003
Courtesy of Brian Gothong Tan, 2003A 17th-century musical instrument can keep company with modern art forms like film.
That is the view of viola da gamba player Shaun Ng who is linking up with dance, poetry and film practitioners in a performance, Suites of a Stranger Taste, Book 1.
Ng, 22, will provide the music to accompany a poetry recital by Cyril Wong, a short film screening by Tania Sng and an Indian dance by Arul Ramiah.
Ng is also a founding member of Musica Obscura, a groups of musicians who began exploring a repertoire of Early Music on period instruments in 2000.
Suites draws from his training in Early Music, paying homage to French Baroque composer and viola da gamba player Marin Marais. The latter scored a series of works translated loosely as Suite of a Foreign Taste. In it, Ng combines some of Marais' music with his own.
"Being a viola da gamba player, you are constantly exposed to the great music of Bach, Forqueray, Marais and Schenk," he says.
"Sometimes, you wish you could just step out of this mainstream genre and create your own music, just like how these composers did when they were alive."
He forged the unusual blend of performers from his personal admiration of others' works.
Of poet and good friend Wong, he says: "Cyril is a good writer who understands poetry well as a genre. His poetry also has a good sense of phrasing and rhythm. This is very important if you are trying to write music to it."
In return, Wong feels such collaborations will give his poems more exposure across different media.
One of his poems, One-Track Vision, was adapted for a short film by Sng last year. His other works have also been adapted for plays and soundtracks.
Similarly, Ng approached Ramiah and Sng because he shared their passion for Indian culture and film-making.
Though the viola da gamba is often associated with baroque music, Ng believes that it is suited perfectly for a contemporary context.
"One should not come to this performance expecting a baroque recital. Yes, the viola da gamba was a baroque instrument, but perhaps this recital will change that idea."
EXISTENCE
by Elina Ismail in KLue - +aroundtown_arts, issue 48, Nov 14, 2003
A Singapore Theatre Company Translates Poetry To Drama In Existence,
In The Play's First Showing Outside Its Home In The Lion City
Courtesy of Stephen Loh, 2003Come the end of November, KL will get a little visit from a Singaporean theatre company known as The Fun Stage, who will stage Existence, adapted from the brilliant works of Singaporean poet Cyril Wong. Wong's poems have been featured in overseas publications such as Atlanta Review (USA) and Cordite (Australia). He's also been a featured poet at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in 2003. Existence, starring Willy Lau and Lawrence Wong, is a tale of two boys who fall in love with each other, hoping to fill the empty space in their lives and at the same time finding out the meannig in life. But just to get a little background of the play and the theatrical company itself, KLue got hold of Benny Lim, director of Existence and founder of The Fun Stage, for a one-on-one interview.
Can you tell us a bit about The Fun Stage, and what it does?
The Fun Stage's main direction is to collaborate with other artists from other aspects of art to present works. We do theatre mainly, and so we collaborate with writers, visual artists, dancers, etc. So far, we have collaborated with Cyril Wong, a poet whose poems are read internationally. We are now working with Stella Kon, writer of Emily of Emerald Hill, on a new play titled Eston.
Why did you decide to use Cyril Wong's work? And how did you come across his poetry?
Cyril's latest book Below: Absence talks about the meaninglessness of life and this is where I got the inspiration from. No doubt, his poems also portray homosexual love, which led to my choice of creating two male characters. It has a fairly unexpected beginning. Cyril and I met at a party and he had heard of me and I knew his works too. He suggested that I take a look at his book and I did. Then, came Existence.
What are your own personal thoughts of Existence?
I feel that this play is definitely going to be different. if you ask me if it's a gay play, I will say it's not. But if you ask me, how is it a heterosexual play, I can't really answer. What I can say is that the main theme is on finding meaning in life. Falling in love is one way to fill the void in life. Hence, it can be [about] two men falling in love but it can also be one man and one woman or two women. It's a choice on my part.
What is it like working with Cyril Wong? Was he pleased with the way the performance turned out?
This collaboration is not just about me using his poems. Cyril is very involved in the whole creation. He sits in for rehearsals and he shares with me his personal take on some of the poems I chose. Over time, we've become close friends. To me, the process of collaboration cannot solely be an artistic one. This process should include bond building and exchanges of life experiences. One learns more this way.
What is the message you hope to send?
Life is meaningless and you have to admit it. Many people just go on with life finding things to do to fill the emptiness. I don't deny I do that too but I am rational enough to come out of it and internalise it. People who like the play will agree to life being meaningless, very slow moving and painful. People who hate this either don't understand the story or they are in self-denial that their life is meaningless.
THE TWAIN SHALL MEET
by Greg Cahill in Strings Magazine, No. 115, January 2004For Shaun Ng, discovering the viola da gamba proved a life-changing experience. "I personally believe that there is a missing link in our musical heritage," says the 22-year-old Malaysian musician and composer, "as there is no bass instrument—other than the viola da gamba—that expresses this kind of tonality. The larger cousin of the erh-hu [the two-string Chinese violin], to my knowledge, does not exist anymore. The modern reproductions of it are closely related to the cello and the double bass. This is why perhaps many people here possess a special affinity for the cello. But the viola da gamba has many more possibilities than a cello.
"Imagine what one can do with seven strings instead of four!"
Ng, a student at the Amsterdam Conservatory of Music, has been exploring those possibilities in some interesting ways while winning rave reviews. As the founder of the Singapore-based ensemble Musica Obscura, which specializes in medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque music, Ng is introducing the viola da gamba (also known as the bass viol) and early European music to a larger Asian audience. As a solo artist, he has performed and recorded works by Bach and Telemann, among others. But he also performs contemporary material in a duo with harpsichordist Shane Thio.
As a composer, Ng is helping to bring this ancient European instrument into the modern world. He recently told music writer Rachel Jacques that his mission is "to penetrate the souls of the listeners and to excite their emotions (to use the words of Leopold Mozart), and make accessible and familiar the raw energy and humanistic allusions that thrive in the nature of this music.
"We want to serve as an alternative to the more staid and established classical music conventions and institutions already prevalent in Singapore," he added. "One needs to understand what music is really about. People in Singapore need to be subjected to raw and honest emotion without the glitz and glamour of concert halls."
As a teen, Ng traveled to Europe on a scholarship and has since studied early music with Richard Boothby and Lucy Robinson of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Mieneke van der Velden of the Amsterdam Conservatory, and Philippe Pierlot of the Royal Conservatory of the Hague.
"I discovered the viola da gamba in 1997 when I met José Vázquez, the professor of early music at the Musikhochschule Vienna, while studying modern violin there," Ng says. "The initial attraction was naturally its sound. The viola da gamba possesses a kind of sound that evokes certain emotions—a kind of melancholy that complements such Asian instruments as the Indian sarang and the Chinese erh-hu. That is no surprise since these instruments share many similar technical attributes."
As an associate artist at the Substation, Singapore's first independent arts center, Ng is exploring the boundaries of that instrument. Last August, Ng premiered his own multimedia avant-garde performance piece, Suites of Stranger Taste, Book 1, a reference to a series of works by progressive French viola da gambist Marin Marais (1656–1728).
The work employed the viola da gamba in compositions based on Indian ragas and teamed Ng with filmmaker Tania Sng, Bharatanatyam choreographer and dancer Arul Ramiah, and award-winning poet Cyril Wong of Singapore.
"The response was great," Ng says of his growing Malaysian following, an audience that obviously appreciates the bold cross-cultural approach he brings to his works. "As with Suites of Stranger Taste, Book 1, as often as possible I like to reach out to poets, composers, musicians, and dancers in my work. And I'm finding there are many others here who like to experience this form of experimental art."
Shaun Ng's next concert, on January 18, at the Sacramentskerk in the Netherlands, features the music of C.P.E. Bach, J.S. Bach, Georg Phillip Telemann, and others, with Clotilde Verwaerde, harpsichord.
A DOWN UNDER POETRY DATE
by Tessa Wong in The Straits Times, Life! Aug 10, 2002Four Singaporean poets will be rubbing shoulders with more than 50 Australian poets in sunny Brisbane come September.
Cyril Wong, Toh Hsien Min and Yong Shu Hoong will be doing three readings at this year's Queensland Poetry Festival, while Grace Chia will be doing two.
This will be the second time Singapore writers are headed Down Under. Last August, six poets went on a whirlwind tour of four Australian cities.
Fellow poet Felix Cheong will accompany the four to Brisbane and will apear at the launch of papertiger: new world poetry #02, the second in a series of CD-ROM anthologies of poems published by Australian poet Paul Hardacre.
Cheong, 36, guest-edited the special issue on Singapore writing.
Wong, Toh and Yong, whose work are included in the issue, will be doing their third reading at the festival at the anthology's launch.
Cheong, who went on last year's tour, says: "We managed to beak a lot of misconceptions about Singapore in the last tour. For example, people in Australia tend to have the idea that we are a cultural desert, a wasteland."
"Another misconception is that we write poetry in Chinese, since we're seen as a Chinese society. So the Australians were surprised that there is depth, history and a sufficient range of styles and voices in English poetry by Singaporeans."
All four writers who have been invited to the festival are understandably excited, if not a little starry-eyed, at the opportunity to hob-nob with fellow literary wordsmiths.
Says Yong, 35: "It is always a thrill to be able to meet accomplished poets face-to-face and trade experiences. After all, we've not seen many established overseas poets zipping in and out of Singapore."
He adds: "I expect I'll be doing a fair bit of autograph-hunting there."
The six-year-old festival is an annual event at the city. This year, it runs from Sept 27 to 29 and will feature the cream of Australia's poetry world, including Australian verse novelist Dorothy Porter - whose book The Monkey's Mask was made into a film - and Les Murray, who is regarded as Australia's premier poet.
POETRY GETS MOTION
Singaporean writers put their work on an international stage
by Felix Cheong in Today, Aug 01, 2003
This month, four homegrown poets will create history with their one-night performance at the 20-year-old festival, the largest of its kind in the world and the writers are understandably excited.
“It’s an honour and privilege,” declared 31-year-old Alvin Pang, whose second volume of verse, City of Rain, was launched a few weeks ago. “I hope to get a chance to put our writing on the world map before a global audience.”
Echoing Pang’s sentiment was 25-year-old Cyril Wong, a project manager with The Substation who has three books of poetry to his name.
“What means most to me is the rare chance to share my poems with a sophisticated audience of readers as well as to meet other poets,” Wong said.
Networking, what the writers jokingly call their “groupie” activity, is part of the thrill of attending such festivals. And, putting them in writers’s paradise is EIBF’s staggering line-up at this year.
Scheduled to read and sign books are more than 550 authors, including American novelist John Irving, renowned scholar Susan Sontag, Book Prize winner Ben Orki, Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa and Britain’s reigning Poet Laureate Andrew Motion.
The prospect of rubbing shoulders with such giants of the literary world certainly puts pressure on the Singapore writers to put their best lines forward.
“It’s like playing in the FA Cup Final,” Toh Hsien Min, 28, commented wryly.
The process consultant has published two poetry collections and was once president of the Oxford University Poetry Society.
Said Toh: “It’s a difficult achievement enough to get there, but once you come out under the floodlights, you just want to do your best.”
In addition to their gig at Edinburgh, the Singapore contingent will also make stops at the Poetry Society of London and the Scottish Poetry Library.
Their 10-day trip is funded by the National Arts Council, the Singapore International Foundation and the British Council.
It is the latest in a series of reading tours which the poets initiated in 2001 to bring local writing to an international audience. With the EIBF invitation, it seems their efforts are finally paying off.
EIBF director Catherine Lockerbie concurred. “Our festival is all about opening horizons, hearing words and thoughts from other places as well as our own…So, it’s a real privilege to welcome such active and enthusiastic writers from the East.”
SINGAPORE POETS DEBUT AT EDINBURGH BOOK FESTIVAL
by Ong Sor Fern in The Straits Times, Life! Aug 16, 2003Two poets knocked back some whisky to help their frayed nerves.
Despite suffering stage fright, four Singapore poets made a credible debut at the prestigious Edinburgh Books Festival on Tuesday night.
For an hour, Felix Cheong, Alvin Pang, Toh Hsien Min and Cyril Wong presented a small but appreciative crowd of about 30 festival-goers with a broad range of Singapore writing.
Each poet prefaced his 15-minute reading with an introduction about his work. Wong said half-jokingly: "I looked calm but I was internally hysterical."
Despite the writers' performance anxieties, the audience was generally pleased.
Scottish retiree Ann Perkins showed up because she had a Singapore connection.
"I was born in Singapore and I lived there till I was about six," she said.
Pam Wardell, a recently retired BBC presenter who hosted the reading, declared herself a convert.
"The poets have such a diverse range of voices. I laernt so much about Singapore in one evening," she said.
Although some 70 tickets at £8 ($22.40) each had been sold for the event, the actual turnout was more modest, as the session clashed with an appearance by the festival's star attraction - American feminist writer Susan Sontag.
Nonetheless, a good mix of young and old festival-goers turned up to see what Singapore writing had to offer.
Festival director Catherine Lockerbie showed up late to congratulate the poets.
"I heard that the reading went very well. Everyone was very pleased," she said.
Pang said: "It's great that Catherine heard good feedback so soon after our reading. It means that we acquitted ourselves well and repaid her faith in inviting us to the festival. And it also means there's more scope for other Singapore writers to come to the festival in the future."
The festival attracted a great array of internationally renowned writers. This year's attendees include Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa, Britain's poet laureate Andrew Motion as well as more popular star attractions like Candace Bushnell and Douglas Coupland.
Invitations are issued by the festival, which pays all writers the same honorarium regardless of their fame and stature.
The festival, which started in 1983, has been growing in size and repute over the years.
It is now the biggest festival in the world and offers more than 600 programmes over 2 1/2 weeks.
OF THE BITTEN PATH
by Clara Chow in The Straits Times, Life! Sat, Apr 24, 2004Death and suicides may dominate Cyril Wong's collection of poems but it is his realism that redeems the dark themes.
IN ONE incarnation, Cyril Wong, 26, is project manager at arts venue, The Substation.
In another, he is a fan of morbid images of accidents and suicides.
In yet another, he is a poet and author of four poetry collectoins, the latest of which is Unmarked Treasure. Published by Firstfruits earlier this month, it has a print run of 500.
He tells Life! why poetry is still valid as mirror and confessional:
Why did you title the book Unmarked Treasure?
The title acknowledges that there are still parts of myself that I have yet to discover. It also refers to how most valuable things do not promote themselves as such - until we stumble upon and are unexpectedly redeemd by them.
You address your family in your poetry. Ever worry about what people might say to your mother at the market?
You are assuming a lot of people read poetry.
You've got a poem about your father's affair with a broom. What inspired it?
My father has a knack of doing housework so as not to think about his problems. For me, doing housework became a metaphor for running away until one loses oneself.
What is your family's response to your poems?
My mum was troubled at first. But I explained that I try to paint a balanced picture whenever I write about her. She cares more about the fact that I have been published. My sister is ecstatic and keeps telling me how proud she is that I wrote about her.
What are your thoughts on poetry as confessional?
Confessional poetry has a bad reputation. "Naval gazing" is one negative way of looking at it. But it just means poetry comes from genuine experience. It is through this "authenticity" - poet Anne Sexton's word - that a reader might relate to and engage with the poem.
Why are your poems often about death and suicide?
I was suicidal five years ago and that time of my life still haunts me now. I was going through a lot of angst over my sexuality and religion, and dealing with isolation and loneliness. In talking about death, I am really talking about the value of life.
What makes you respond to the work of photographers like Enrique Metinides and Simryn Gill in your poems?
I came across one of Mexican photographer Metinides' images that traumatised me. It was of a dead woman after a car crash, titled Adela Legarreta Rivas Is Struck By A White Datsun On Avenida Chapultepec. She looked like she was posing for a photo-shoot. It made death look glamorous.
Gill's series, A Small Town At The Turn Of The Century, is so wacky with everyday people wearing fruits on their heads. It reminds me how poetry adds a dramatically new twist to what we take for granted.
If you would be a type of verse, what would you be?
A prose poem, because I am an interminable narrative congested with metaphors and emotionally-charged images.
What are you working on next?
A series of epistolary poems to people whose songs or art have altered my life somewhat.
PERFORMANCE POETRY HERE TO STAY
by Cheah Ui-Hoon in The Business Times, The Arts/Cinema, Fri, May 7, 2004Its following in Singapore has increased, going by the sustainability of monthly poetry slams. Cheah Ui-Hoon checks out some upcoming events.
PERFORMANCE poetry has popped up as a popular genre these days. The Poetry Slam – a monthly event at Velvet Underground – celebrates its first anniversary this month. Two upcoming performances at The Substation are also based on poetry.
Has this higher visibility for poetry helped Singaporeans’ appreciation for poetry and poets? Poet Felix Cheong thinks so. “Having poetry read out loud and dramatised does bring it back to its origins as the spoken word,” he says. “And performance poetry brings it to the masses.” Poetry is evidently one of the more popular forms of local literature – comprising close to 70 per cent of new Singapore book releases every year.
Actor Benny Lim of The Fun Stage credits poet Cyril Wong for his current appreciation of poetry. “I’ve always been keen to do dramatised poetry now that I appreciate poetry better,” he says. His upcoming monologue, Mother Doesn’t Get It, is the second time he’s worked with Wong’s poetry. This time it’ll be based on the latter’s new book, Unmarked Treasure.
But instead of just dramatised reading, Lim will convert some of Wong’s poems into a monologue, movement and multimedia clips. “It’s a three-in-one performance, and with the use of images – there won’t be words. Those will just take the concept behind Wong’s poems about his mother,” says Lim.
The performance will end with a twist – audience members are given a VCD so they can watch the ending at home.
Meanwhile, Hong Kong-based poet Mani Rao will be giving a performance poetry session based on her recently released collection of poetry, echolocation.
Perhaps the clearest indication that performance poetry is here to stay is the fact that non-profit arts company, Word Forward Limited, which organises poetry slams at Velvet Underground has sustained the last-Tuesday-of-the-month activity for one whole year.
Chris Mooney-Singh, Word Forward’s programme director, says there’s definitely been an increase of people writing new poetry or coming forward to perform. “It’s not a literary event, that’s for sure, if you’re thinking of poets reading for other poets.”
Instead of being poet-centred, as traditional poetry reading events have been, the Poetry Slam is audience-centred.
Have they run out of poetry to read yet? “Nope. That’s because we mix new poetry with classic ones, and the slam also includes music or rap, even dance,” he says. For instance, the theme last month was the Daily Grind, which featured urban themes in working life. This month, the theme is Duets – where performers will come in teams of two.
The rationale is simple – reading poems aloud shows people how poetry sounds, and performing is the most effective way to earn new listeners, and hence readers, of poetry.
“My belief is that poetry is first an oral art art, and secondly a written one,” says Mooney-Singh. “But having said that, there’s room for different kinds of poetry.”
While poets like Cheong see performance poetry sessions as a good testing ground, Wong thinks that on the flip side, people can get complacent in their appreciation of the complexity of poetry. “Sometimes performance poetry can be too in-your-face, and too straightforward – interpreting poetry at only one level. Performance poetry can sometimes undermine a more complex poem,” Wong says.
FROM THOUGHT TO POEM
by David Chew in Today, Oct 11, 2004
New poetry anthology uncovers the creative writing processes of local poets"I COMPARE it to the Beatles anthology, where you can see how the Beatles took Strawberry Fields Forever version to version till it was finally performed," said Felix Cheong, local poet and editor of idea to ideal, with a laugh.
To be launched at local poetry reading group Subtext's session on Nov 4 at the Book Café, idea to ideal traces the creative writing processes of 12 local poets in their works.
The book is ground-breaking, being the first anthology available that has ruminations of three generations of Singapore poets — from Goh Poh Seng to Angeline Yap to Cyril Wong — compiled in one volume.
The idea for such an anthology came when Cheong, who was then undertaking his masters in creative writing in Brisbane, found that there was little material for him about the writing process.
And, being a Singaporean, he wanted to home in on Singapore writers. But other than one or two essays by local poet Edwin Thumboo, there was no consolidated material to work with.
"So, when I came back, I approached the National Arts Council for a research and development grant and pitched the idea of an anthology of essays, where local poets could discuss their hang-ups as writers and how they heave each poem from idea to ideal."
He received a $12,000 grant from the NAC and, a year and a half later, ideal to ideal bore fruition. Published by First Fruits Publications, it will be available at major bookstores for $20.
Fifteen poets — the criteria was that each had to have published at least two books — were approached and 12 responded.
ideal to ideal aims to inspire budding writers as well as serve as a useful resource for academics. Aside from scanned actual first drafts of the poets notes on pieces of paper, the book reads like an intimate gaze into each poet's mind.
One discovers that to Angeline Yap, her poems are many instalments of conversations over the years, and that Chandran Nair wrote Trees (for My Father) out of grief over his father, while Alvin Pang's City Of Rain was a five-year collective and fluctuating experiment in image-making.
While one would think that ruminating on one's own work can be a terribly narcissistic and easy thing to do, Cheong said that quite a few of the writers actually found it quite difficult to reflect on their own writing process.
"Because it takes a certain amount of distancing from your own work, you need to helicopter yourself out of your own poem to be able to comment on your own writing and how it came about," he said. "In a way it's a naval-gazing process. But sometimes we see the naval for what it is, sometimes you see it as a little well that tunnels into your soul."
Goh Poh Seng, having "disowned" his own poems before, said he had to "befriend" them once again to do an essay for the book. He mentioned to Cheong that this might revive a creative spurt in him again.
POETRY FOR THE MASSES
by David Chew in Today, Oct 14, 2004
Cyril Wong’s new online journal aims to introduce local bards to the worldLOCAL poet Cyril Wong has started a new online poetry journal and he hopes the journal christened softblow will soon make its presence felt internationally.
Borne out of a passion to feature local writing that could be placed side by side with great international works one day, the idea – which had been at the back of Wong’s mind for a long time – only came alive this year.
Currently, there are several literary online journals, as well as other platforms, for local writers to showcase their works.
There’s the Quarterly Literary Review Singapore (www.qlrs.com), the Poetry Billboard (www.poetrybillboard.com), The 2nd Rule (www.the2ndrule.com), The Writer Pages (www.thewritepages.com) and an information site called Literary Singapore (www.writer.per.sg).
The people behind softblow want it to be more than a literary site hosting work by award-winning and emerging poets; they want it to put the focus on the work itself.
"I felt that there wasn’t enough focus on poetry in the online literary journals available now. And besides, at the moment, Singapore doesn’t have an online poetry journal that can claim to have international recognition," said Wong.
"People here really just gets published in the strangest of places!"
Deciding what will feature on softblow are a panel of three editors: Wong, Chris Ong, a long time friend of Wong’s who has edited his work right from the beginning, and Jason Wee – another local poet who was one of the recipients of the Shell-NAC scholarship this year.
"It’s not Singapore Idol! It’s not a popularity contest, please," laughed Wong.
Calling for submissions on international and local poetry mailing lists, Wong said he received 10 submissions on the first day of the website going public.
Thus far, a total of 30 submissions have been received.
Noting that burn-out and a lack of commitment have led to the downfall of many other such pursuits, both Wong and Ong say that theirs is easy to maintain and the main work has been done already.
"Since the website has been set up already, all we need to do now it to put up the poems. We will be fine as along as people keep submitting the poems."
They are currently in talks to involve student work from a local junior college.
CONFESSIONS OF A POET
by Kristina Tom in The Sunday Times, Aug 7, 2005
Outspoken poet Cyril Wong says there’s no point being an angry young man
Cyril Wong, one of Singapore’s best known contemporary poets, says “he’s lazy”. Asked whether he needs to prepare for this year’s Singapore Writers Festival, he tries not to laugh.“I just read, lah,” says the 28-year-old.
When did you start writing?
In National Service. It was boring. You can quote me on that, man. National Service was a waste of my life.
What did you write about?
Family. I don’t know why – not because I missed my family. I’d never say that. I just started writing poetry and I realised the only kind of poetry I could write had to be authentic and meaningful – something that I knew about. So I wrote about my family.
Why would you never say you missed your family?
My father stopped talking to me 15 years ago when I brought a certain friend home who was very gay, and he disapproved. When he met my friend he realised what direction I was taking. We started fighting and he said, “Don’t see your friend anymore.” I said, “No.” At that moment we both realised we were as stubborn and proud as each other.
What do your parents think of your work?
My father and I found a way never to communicate with each other again. I think he’s secretly proud of the attention I got for my poetry. But my mother is completely blinded by that. The fact that I got attention for my poetry is enough.
Is your poetry still mostly confessional?
Yeah. I like to say I’m redefining it. Just because I don’t use the word “I” doesn’t mean it’s not confessional. I’m giving my opinion and I put it in a way that sound universal, but I assume the reader knows where I’m coming from – that’s it’s my point of view.
Why poetry of all forms?
I had a very small notebook. Really.
What prompted you to start Softblow.com?
I wanted to show that international poetry could submit their works to Softblow, and Singaporean writers could be up beside them. Because we’re not nothing; we’re not nobodies in a small island in this part of Asia. It’s my way of making local poetry more exposed and putting it on a higher footing. I get 10, 000 hits a month, but it’s hard to tell because that’s 10, 000 hits, not 10, 000 people.
Are you working on a new book?
I’m waiting for funding for my new chapbook titled, if…else. I applied for funding in May, and hopefully I’ll hear from the National Arts Council this month. In a way they decide if my books get published. If there’s no funding from them, that’s it. I’ll be delayed another year.
Is that the same for all poets here?
Yeah, unless you’re into the self-publishing thing – then you don’t have to care. But if you’re under a publisher, and you don’t want to put in money yourself, you have to get funding from the National Arts Council. It’s about $5000 for a first print run of poetry. A publisher will pay half. The other half comes from someone or somewhere else: either you, or a sponsor.
Has the writing scene changed much since you put out that first book in 2000?
Not really. This will sound very arrogant, but I wish there were more poets like me and Alfian Sa’at, who dare to say things outright, as opposed to writing mediocre lyric poems. I’m very sick of mediocre lyric poems. You read their poetry and you go, “What have you been reading? Did you stop at Robert Frost, or what?”
What has been your experience with censorship?
It depends on how you define censorship. I’m not allowed to publish certain poems in the sense that they won’t give me funding if certain poems appear in a manuscript. But if I remove these poems, maybe a handful of them, then yes, they’ll give me money for it. It’s not official or anything like that. It’s all very hush hush.
You seem to take it in your stride.
Yeah, I’m not angsty about these things. I used to be; I used to care a lot. But then I realised if you get angry, it only alienates you further, and you won’t be able to do anything about it. Once you get angry, you’re relegated to the outside. People just won’t care about you. But if you say you’re not angry, then they say, “Okay”. And slowly you change things from the inside.
Lianhe Zaobao, 22/10/05
BOOST FOR S'PORE LITERATURE WITH LAUNCH OF WRITERS' CENTRE
in The Straits Times, Nov 19, 2006LOCAL literature got another leg-up last night with the launch of the Singapore Writers Centre.
It was mooted by the National Book Development Council (NBDC) which will, among other things, organise writing masterclasses and set up online writing resources. But the centre will not be a physical entity, that is, housed anywhere.
Announcing this at the awards ceremony for the biennial Singapore Literature Prize yesterday, Minister of State for Trade and Industry S. Iswaran said: 'Writers not only shaped our history, they pave the path to our future.'
The ceremony at the National Library Board headquarters saw poets Cyril Wong and Yong Shu Hoong tying for the top prize in the English category.
Wong, 29, won for his fourth collection of poems, Unmarked Treasure, while Yong, 39, clinched it for his third poetry collection, Frottage. They will share the $10,000 cash prize.
Among those at the ceremony last night was American author Paul Theroux, who was en route to Myanmar. He said of the prize: 'This is a very good platform for writers because they are getting good money.'
Indeed, Wong and Yong's wins are timely, as both have quit their jobs to concentrate on writing.
In the Chinese category, deputy director of Lianhe Zaobao, Chia Joo Ming, 47, won for his short story collection Chong Gou Nan Yang Tu Xiang (Reconstructing Nanyang), while veteran writer Mohamed Latiff Mohamed, 56 - who had won the prize two years ago - won again in the Malay category for his short story collection Nostalgia Yang Hilang (The End Of Nostalgia).
Only a $5,000 merit prize was awarded in the Tamil category this year, to writer Mohamed Iqbal, 65, for his poetry collection, Vanavargal Mannil Irukkirarkal (Angels Are Here On Earth).
POETS IN MOTION
by Stephanie Yap in The Sunday Times, Nov 19, 2006
The $10, 000 Singapore Literature Prize has come just in time for poets Cyril Wong and Yong Shu Hoong - they are both moving from their full-time jobs to academia.BY SHEER coincidence, the two poets who have tied for the Singapore Literature Prize (SLP) in English are quitting or have quit their full-time jobs.
Following decisions made independently before they learnt they would split the $10,000 award, Yong Shu Hoong, 39, left his job as a vice-president at UOB last month, while Cyril Wong, 29, leaves his programme manager job at The Substation arts centre at the end of this year.
The winners of the prize, given by the National Book Development Council, were announced last night.
During a chat with LifeStyle last week at Books Actually, a cosy bookstore in Telok Ayer Street, both said they were going to do stints in academia.
Yong, who won for his third poetry collection, Frottage, joined the National University of Singapore as an associate with its Centre of the Arts at the beginning of this month.
Meanwhile, Wong, who won for his fourth collection, titled Unmarked Treasure, will begin a master's degree in English literature next year at NUS, on a research scholarship.
Both said they badly needed a change of scene.
'I stayed in the banking industry for six years only because of the money,' Yong said. 'My department was being restructured, so I took it as a good time to take a break and concentrate on writing.'
The freelance journalist has also run subTEXT, a monthly poetry reading at the National Library, since May 2001. He was nominated for the SLP in 1995 for an unpublished manuscript, but did not win.
Academia is also a much-needed breather for Wong, who has been with The Substation since 2004. He is also founding editor of the online poetry journal, softblow.com.
'I'm tired of managing the arts every day because I see how it is kind of a losing battle. The arts are becoming more and more commercialised,' he said. 'There are some people who realise that they can't make money in arts, and so they swing to the other extreme and do it just for the money.'
While both poets agree that artists in Singapore actually have a lot of opportunities, whether it is platforms for their art or grants to fund their work, neither considers himself a product of the Government's push to promote the arts.
Both had stumbled into poetry on their own.
Wong started out writing horror stories while studying at St Patrick's School, and was published in the school journal, Shamrock. He tried his hand at poetry only during national service.
Wong, an NUS English graduate who received a Young Artist Award last year, said: 'In school, I had wanted to write screenplays, or novels like Stephen King. I wanted to write The Shining.
'But after a while, things caught up with me.'
There was a period, he said, when he suffered from bouts of depression.
'NS came and made me feel so lousy about myself. So I ended up with all that literary energy turned inwards towards myself, to dig up issues about my insecurity, my psychological problems, and I couldn't stop writing.'
Meanwhile, Yong, an NUS computer science graduate who has an MBA from Texas A&M University, started writing only while doing his master's in 1993. He was inspired by a book of Jim Morrison poetry.
'It was like some of the Biennale installation artworks, where you look and think that anyone could have done it. So I thought, why don't I give it a try?' he said with a laugh.
While winning a literary award might then seem like a coup for these late bloomers, they are worried it might lead some to see them as part of the establishment, or mainstream.
Said Yong: 'It's good to win because of the recognition, which will make it easier to get grants. But on the other hand, I have not always agreed in the past when someone was picked over someone else.'
He was referring to the year when Boey Kim Cheng's critically acclaimed poetry collection, Days Of No Name, was passed over in favour of Roger Jenkins' From The Belly Of The Carp, which was considered more nationalistic. Boey has since taken up Australian citizenship.
Wong agreed: 'My friends are not so forgiving. When I got shortlisted, I immediately got SMSes saying, 'So when did you become mainstream?'
So they say the tie is a happy occurrence.
Both were told of the results a week before the ceremony, and Wong was so excited that he e-mailed some friends and acquaintances, ruining the organiser's hopes of keeping the literary community in the dark until the awards were officially announced yesterday.
Said Yong about the tie: 'It's a good compromise because you're winning it, and at the same time you are sharing it.'
Both also noted that the winning collections do not deal with overtly Singaporean themes.
Frottage was inspired by Yong's visit to a Max Ernst exhibition in Australia, while Unmarked Treasure is a deeply personal collection about love, loss and loneliness.
But does wanting to remain 'a best-kept secret', as Yong put it, mean that they considered themselves inaccessible to the general public?
The poets are the first to admit that outside their literary circle, it is not always clear who their fans are.
'The only impression I get of my audience is when I get strange e-mail messages, or when I read blog entries about my poetry,' said Wong, who thinks his Singaporean readers are mostly young adults.
Still, they stressed that their poetry was meant to appeal to different people on different levels.
Yong said: 'I do feel that my poems are not difficult to get into, and I think that there are certain layers that people can peel to get into the poem's core.'
He said some of his non-poetry-reading ex-colleagues have bought his books just to support him, only to return the next day to tell him that they actually did not find the poems difficult to understand.
'These are people in the financial world who have probably lost touch with poetry a long time ago,' he said.
'But, of course, if Cyril or other poets read my poems, then there are a lot more things they would be able to get, which even I myself am surprised to discover. Though, of course, when they point these out, I say I intentionally put them in.'
Both poets were also aware that, for better or for worse, there was going to be increased scrutiny, and obvious comparisons, between their works.
Yong, who re-read Wong's collection after hearing of the tie, said: 'For Cyril as a confessional poet, he basically lays down all his feelings, spreads them out on the table. As for me, I tend to look at things in a sort of subtle, detached way.'
Wong added: 'Shu Hoong takes a situation and lifts it, peers underneath, sees a bit, turns it around and offers new perspectives on the situation.
'I am not that subtle, or rather, my subtlety lies elsewhere: I will stab the thing, open it, take it all out and then I will play subtly with the insides.'
Books | Verse-case scenario
by June Lee in TimeOut Singapore, Mar 2007
One house, two poets, three months. June Lee asks Cyril Wong about his recent collaboration with an Aussie.When Cyril Wong went to pick up Terry Jaensch at the airport, it was the first time the two poets had ever met - even though Wong had already agreed to write a book with the Australian, and let him stay in his house. Three months of sharing a home and a laptop later, they had 'Excess Baggage and Claim', a story told in poetry about an Australian tourist and a Singaporean local. The characters, based loosely on the writers themselves, travel in different emotional directions, but eventually meet in the middle to bond over the ubiquity of malls in Singapore. Along the way, each character deals with issues of hope, love and homosexuality. Before the book's upcoming launch at the RSVP Australia Festival, we sat down with Singapore Literature Prize winner Wong to hear about the strange way this story came about.
How did you and Terry meet?
At the Queensland Poetry Festival in 2004, everyone kept saying: "Oh you're just like Terry. You must meet Terry. You and Terry would get along so well." After a while, it was like, enough already. But Terry and I never got to meet at that time, and he got in touch only after I was back in Singapore. We got along very well, as predicted. We kept in touch by phone and email, and one day, he asked: "Would you mind if I stay with you in Singapore?" Terry had initiated an Asialink residency [through the University of Melbourne], and it evolved into us working together on poetry. And so our first meeting was at the airport, he stepped out of the gate and looked around, and I knew instantly.
What was the creative process like? Especially since you shared the same laptop?
It was intense as Terry is the more playful with language while I am more concerned with emotional impact. And working together, we realised that we were writing off each other. I'd write five verses, then he responded with another five, and we worked very fast that way. We finished the book within three months. We never argued. Really.
No clash of egos? No stressful moments?
Terry and I are just so alike, we didn't have any arguments at all. Well, maybe just one. He submitted a poem for a contest, and we disagreed about what sort of entries would win. I was trying to tell him that certain styles or themes were expected, and he disagreed. We stopped working for a day. But that was just one day out of the entire three months.
Anything else develop over the course of this book?
It was purely creative and platonic. We challenged each other to put as much of ourselves into the characters. We played the reverse of each other: Terry's character is optimistic, but a spoiled brat who doesn't find love; mine started out abused but eventually finds love. At one point, they both utter the same line - Singapore is 'one endless mall' - as the characters move through layers and directions.
What do Singaporeans know about poetry?
Very little, but it's not their fault. Reading and appreciating poetry is a process which doesn't happen naturally through the school system. And local poetry for a long time was about the search for national identity and things like the Merlion. Poetry was not about exploring the self.
In the book, Terry's character is new to Singapore. What things did he discover while researching for that?
Mandarin karaoke. It was Terry's idea. He wanted to experience very specific local things. He was very into the karaoke visits, writing out song names as soon we stepped into the place.
What's your favourite poem in the collection?
I love Bollywood films! My favourite work is 'Let's Talk about Something Else la', a three-part poem based on the movie 'Devdas'. I was celebrating movie scene where the pained but regal courtesan is the best dancer in the room.
Has poetry ever saved you from a sticky situation?
I was really broke at one point in 2003. Then I won the [National Arts Council's] Golden Point Award and the prize money tied me over for a month!
You've published five previous volumes of poetry. Didn't you make any money from those?
Frankly, I don't write poetry for money at all. It's not even recreation. For me, poetry is a life mission. It's me asking the English language to teach me about the world. It's answering questions, like what makes life meaningful?
You're countertenor in the group Musica Obscura and until recently the programme manager of The Substation. Now you're focusing on poetry. Which pays the bills?
I've just started a Masters in English Literature at National University of Singapore, and am being paid for it. Come to think of it, I'm receiving almost as much as my old salary, which means I've been underpaid for a long time.
And which is the easiest to do?
Of the three, singing is definitely the easiest. It's purely physical and there's no need to use my brain. Poetry is all brain.
Excess Baggage and Claim (Transit Lounge Publishing, $16.80). Wong and Jaensch read at Books Actually 17 March.
A fairy tale goes to press
by Stephanie Yap in The Straits Times, Life!, May 17, 2007
ONCE upon a time, Cyril Wong became the first local writer to visit home-grown bookstore Books Actually when it opened early last year. Now, he has become the first writer to be published by the store's new small press.
The first title of Math Paper Press is Wong's short story, The Boy With The Flower That Grew Out Of His Ass, a lyrical fairy tale which is also an allegory about homophobia.
BooksActually owners Kenny Leck, 28, and Karen Wai, 22, aim to publish small print runs of shorter works, including poems and essays, that established local publishers would pass on.
'Publishers like firstfruits and Ethos need a certain number of pages and copies to fit their working parameters. We want to fill the gap,' says Leck.
The 40-page book, designed by Wai, will have a print run of 300 copies, the first 100 of which will be signed by Wong, who is currently pursuing his master's in English literature at the National University of Singapore.
It includes three ink illustrations by Singapore-born, Amsterdam-based artist Sookoon Ang, while its cover bears a debossed relief, or indentation, in the shape of one of Ang's images.
Math Paper Press was inspired by the inhouse press of San Francisco's iconic City Lights bookstore. It is renowned for publishing unknown writers and experimental work, including Allen Ginsberg's Howl And Other Poems in 1956.
Though Wong is already an established poet with six titles to his name, Leck and Wai approached him as he has always been a champion of the book store.
'He is not only supportive but also experimental,' says Wai, adding that BooksActually hopes to produce two or three such books a year, as well as any number of even shorter works with print runs of around 40 copies.
Wong, a 2006 Singapore Literature Prize winner, wrote the story back in mid-2005, and says he was influenced by the storytelling sessions of artists Kamini Ramachandran and Verena Tay, which were then being held at arts venue The Substation.
'They got me wanting to write my own sort of fairy tale,' says Wong, 29, who woke up one morning with the story 'fully formed' in his head.
He wrote it down and shared it with a few friends, but had no plans to publish it until BooksActually approached him in the middle of last year.
Though the retail price of $26 is more expensive than some paperback novels, Leck says the quality of writing and workmanship is worth the price.
'We want to dispel the notion that local literature must always be sold cheaply, and of course we want the business to remain viable,' he says.
Wong will get a small percentage of the profit, while the rest will go towards publishing more books under Math Paper Press.
The book costs a little under $2,000 to publish, mostly due to the cost of printing by local firm Unimax.
Meanwhile, the book's pages and binding are hand-folded and stitched by what Leck jokingly refers to as his sweatshop - that is, himself and Wai.
The two have experience making books, having established their successful Birds & Co. line of handmade notebooks a year ago.
The result? A book which Wong himself describes as 'a very pretty surprise'.
He says: 'There is just so much love in a hand-stitched book - it is something extremely precious.'
The Boy With The Flower That Grew Out Of His Ass will be launched at BooksActually tomorrow at 7.30pm and at The Substation on Saturday at 7.30pm. Wong will be reading and signing books, and refreshments will be served. Admission is free.
Baggage Check
by Reg Domino in SX News, May 30, 2007
In Singapore, all men must serve for two years doing National Service upon reaching the age of 18. And for Cyril Wong, this was the place in which it all began.
"What traumatised me about being in the army was the possibility that I could not be my own person," he says. "And I was confronted with the situation in which people can be really ugly. So I found myself having to manoeuvre through many, many situations and I really despised it. And I kind of really missed home as well."
In search of solace, Wong turned to his notebook. "I started to write character sketches," he says. "We were all given a little notebook to write during our courses in the army ... so I was just writing things. And I realised I started writing organically and in line breaks. They were really bad poems actually, but I think something caught on then. And I started to write about my family and a lot of poems and I couldn't stop."
Fast forward to 2007, and Wong is one of Singapore's most prolific literary stars. He is the author of five published collections of poetry and in 2006 was awarded the prestigious national award, the Singapore Literature Prize in Poetry. He has appeared in numerous festivals around the world and this week, he is a guest at the Sydney Writers' Festival, where he will be reading a selection of poems from his latest collection, Excess Baggage & Claim, alongside co-author, Terry Jaensch.
Excess Baggage & Claim is set in the bustling milieu of Singapore, and explores the themes of dislocation, self-discovery and redemption. "It's about two gay men - one Australian and one Singaporean - and how one man finds a way of getting over the anxieties about being gay, about finding love, and one who does not, and becomes really insular and really absorbed."
The project was born when Jaensch, from Melbourne, was granted an Asialink residency in Singapore in 2005. The book was carved in a space of three months. It's a phenomenal achievement, especially when you consider that poetry is perhaps the most solitary of all literary pursuits. It wasn't long before the two men found an effective writing rhythm and, Wong says, "It really helped that we had a mutual admiration for each other's work already."
Originally, both poets set out on the idea of writing about castrati opera singers. And indeed, it's a subject that becomes the focus of their introductory poem. But their vision eventually evolved, morphing into something completely different.
"We were joking over lunch one time and it was a very hot day," Wong says. "And we were saying something like, 'Why don't we write and create characters that are completely opposite from ourselves.' And we decided to just give it a try, and once we started it just happened on its course."
But while they set out to paint characters that are polar opposites from their real selves, Wong also found himself reaching into his own life to help form a foundation for his character.
Wong's partner of three years was sexually abused as a child, and it wasn't until 30 years later that he would find the strength and courage to speak out. "When he came back home, he was a changed person, and when he met me, he was able to find a life of love. So I wanted to include that detail of sexual abuse and chart that same progress of a person. In order to go through something like that, you'd have to be extremely strong willed. So that was something very unique to my partner in that he was very determined to be happy and I wanted my character to be like that."
Wong's poignant poetry also provides insights into Bollywood films (Wong later fell in love with Bollywood culture after being introduced to it by his partner), performance singing (Wong himself is a countertenor), and of course, about being gay in Singapore.
Yet, for Wong, being a gay writer in Singapore has also been a source of contention both personally and professionally. His first manuscript was heavily censored by the country's National Arts Council because of the prevalence of gay themes and issues, forcing him to reassess his tack. "I wanted to start as a gay writer and a gay poet," he says. "But it really came across as if I was promoting gay culture ... and this was in the late '90s when Singapore was still a bit retarded in that sense."
But on the other hand, in the end, Wong admits that the censorship also turned out to be a good thing, in that it allowed his writing to grow and diversify. "Eventually I was able to write more and more," he says. "But at the same time, my own personal agenda evolved and ironically, I ended up becoming more than just a gay poet. I found myself becoming more holistic and more varied in the things I was writing."
Cyril Wong and Terry Jaensch will be appearing at the The Sydney Writers' Festival on Saturday, June 2, 2:30pm, at Bangarra Mezzanine, Hickson Road, Walsh Bay. Visit swf.org.au for more info. Excess Baggage & Claim is out now through Transit Lounge.
A Passionate Poet from Straitlaced Singapore
by Ishaan Tharoor in TIME (Asia Edition), Wed, Nov 28, 2007
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.
In this respect, Wong's poetry differs from that of older Singaporean poets such as Edwin Thumboo and Lee Tzu Pheng, who typically concerned themselves with questions of national and cultural identity (indeed, Thumboo has spoken of Wong's "remarkable inwardness"). Wong worries less about his cultural provenance and more about his own isolation amid the boom and bustle of the cityscape. In one poem, he bemoans his distance from his mother: she "sits in front/ of the television every day,/ afloat in a dress too large/ for her body, fanning herself/ with a magazine, feigning contentment." He compares his father, who has refused to accept Wong's sexuality, to a cockroach hiding in a chair. "We are furniture to each other," says Wong. (The two men still don't speak.)
Some of Wong's rawness was tempered in Unmarked Treasure (2004) and Like a Seed with Its Singular Purpose (2006) — two volumes praised for their probing, reflective study of love and desire. In the poem "Practical Aim" from Like a Seed, Wong asks: "After deep loss, what does the heart/ learn that it has not already understood/ about regret? When all light finally/ forsakes a room, do we take the time/ to interrogate the dark, and to what end?" Other poems simmer with sexual energy; an aircraft landing on the tarmac becomes heady foreplay with the "slow lick of its wheels/ against the runway's/ belly."
Wong ran afoul of Singapore's censors when they threatened to pull National Arts Council funding from his second volume due to the gay content of some poems. But he learned to cope with the restrictions, and they haven't prevented him from attaining mainstream acceptance, represented by his winning the Singapore Literary Prize in 2006. If he's proud, Wong doesn't show it. Self-deprecating and mirthful, he describes himself as lazy, living off his partner's patience and generosity. Though he cites the succinct, confessional styles of American poets Sharon Olds and Raymond Carver as his most direct influences, he feels little in common with contemporary American poetry, which he sees as solipsistic. "There's a boring sameness to it all," he says. "I wish they would stop harping on about their penises and their nose hairs."
Not that Wong has been above some of that in the past. But his recent work strikes boldly into new territory. Tilting Our Plates emphasizes the musicality of poetry rather more than his previous collections, while taking as its core a love story between two shape-shifting Hindu deities. Like those beings, the poet also enjoys inhabiting different avatars. At literary festivals from Adelaide to Edinburgh, Wong, a trained opera singer, has been known to "invoke Whitney Houston," belting out renditions of I Will Always Love You that leave stunned fellow authors wondering how they are going to follow on. If straitlaced Singapore is unhappy about being represented by charming camp like that, well, you could call it poetic justice.
Personal, Not Confessional
by Stephanie Yap in The Sunday Times, Jan 13, 2008
Poet Cyril Wong is quick to confess that his latest collection, with its riffs on Hindu mythology and a central narrative about two lovers stricken with Aids, is his least confessional work thus far.
"As my partner said, 'Better tell peple it is not confessional, hor!'" says the 30-year-old with his characteristically wry grin.
It's easy to see why Wong, who released his sixth poetry book, Tilting Our Plates To Catch The Light, last month, is often labelled a confessional poet.
He was a 23-year-old undergraduate at the National University of Singapore (NUS) when he published his first collection, Squatting Quietly (2000), which dealt with topics like his estrangement from his father and his struggles with his sexuality.
He has since become one of Singapore's most acclaimed--and prolific--poets. His fourth collection, Unmarked Treasure (2004), shared the 2006 Singapore Literature Prize with Yong Shu Hoong's Frottage (2005).
Wong has also been published in numerous journals and anthologies abroad, including the upcoming anthology Language for a New Century by American publishing house W. W. Norton.
"When people describe me as confessional, after a while, I don't even know what that means. As Anne Sexton says, all poets are liars, " he says, referring to the late American writer.
"In her writing, she changes details of her life all the time. The aim is not autobiography, but to get to larger poetic truth."
In the case of this collection, he imagined himself and his partner--both in the pink of health, thank you very much--in the position of the dying lovers.
"It became very painful to write. I started to put bits of our own lives into their story. It has to be authentic to me, or I can't go on writing. I did have some sleepless nights about it," says Wong, who has been with his partner, a corporate communications executive, for seven years.
While the collection touches on "allt he themes I have loved before, and then some new things", the structure of this collection was inspired by Israeli poet Amos Oz's The Same Sea (1999), a verse novel.
"I decided to do something like that, but not so long and winding, and with chapters and stuff," says Wong, who started working on the collection in late 2006.
One new theme that is explored extensively is Hindu mythology, inspired by his partner, a devout Hindu. Wong himself was brought up Catholic but is now "somewhere between agnostic and atheist".
Says the poet: "He is probably one of the most religious people I have ever met. We have an altar at home and he prays every day, and he fasts on Tuesdays because the gods answered his prayers once and he promised to give that in return."
Wong enjoyed listening to the stories his partner would tell him whenever they went to Little India to purchase statues of deities. One story that particularly fascinated him was the story of the god Vishnu, who changed himself into a goddess named Mohini and seduced the god Shiva, eventually producing a child, Ayyappan.
"Of course, there are many interpretations. Many prefer to see this as a straight love story. But really, it didn't matter what gender they were: They were gods and beyond it," says Wong.
"It is a non-gendered idea of love which, in a way, indirectly helps my gay cause," he adds with a grin.
Then, turning serious, he tells you about the Hindu religious text Skanda Purana, which at one point describes the moment Mohini turns back into Vishnu and is about to leave heaven.
"But Shiva still held on to him, and their bodies merged in the intensity of the moment to create the combined deity Harihara. Vishnu had already turned back into a man, but that didn't matter to Shiva. And I like that," he says.
The poet smiles for a moment, then adds: "Yeah. Actually, I love that."
