Bloke & Kids, Lombok

"So we lunched at Lau Pa Sat and talked through the surface of our lives. I told her my glorious pretensions and she smiled back with a charming reticence. I asked her what she was doing working for Mr Tan? Surely she could find something better? She said it’s just a job and she was biding her time while readying her heart and soul for the Universe. I told her I could relate to that. We talked about the dreariness of everyday life, how most things were old cabbage and wet socks. I told her I was getting out, moving to London where I could lose myself. I lectured her on the courage to move away from one’s comfort zone. She smiled at me and suggested Lombok rather than London."

Excerpt from A Long Bicycle Ride Into the Sea, a story in We Rose Up Slowly

You can buy We Rose Up Slowly here (free shipping in Singapore).

A Long Bicycle Ride into the Sea is a story from my collection, We Rose Up Slowly. The story was written in 2011 and published in Coast (Math Paper Press, 2011). 

A Long Bicycle Ride into the Sea:

• is about a young lawyer, coasting along in privilege, who is challenged to get wet to prove his love 
• examines unconscious assumptions, and how a sense of entitlement and the shallowness of one's gaze obscures self awareness, intimacy and growth
• shows the effect of this on relations with others
• contains passing references to small law firms in shophouses in Tanjong Pagar, Prada suits, Raoul cuff links, Lloyds shoes, Louboutin heels, silver charm bracelets, Benny Hill flirting with Emily Dickinson, Halal eating houses, a HDB flat in Clementi, a Hokkien Sponge Bob Square Pants, Lau Pa Sat, Billy Wilder films, Wayne Rooney and Fernando Torres, Amitabh Bachchan and Maggie Q, Kong Hee and Lawrence Khong, Ai Weiwei, Miroslav Tichý, Henry Darger and Beatrix Potter, Justin Bieber and Taufik Batisah, the planet Zog, and the song 无条件为你. 
• Why so many names dropped? I wanted to show the pretentious superficiality of the narrator and how this obstructs his ability to achieve deeper relations with others.
• He is bewildered by the things life end up throwing at him, and so he should be.

SingPoWriMo 2016

On 30 April, SingPoWriMo 2016 held its Closing Party at BooksActually.

Apparently there were free ice cream sandwiches. I didn't manage to get any (maybe that was by design) but I did manage to find a kind person who gave me a cigarette (thanks Jocelyn).

Joshua Ip has a list of things to do next - including contributing to journals and supporting the 2016 Anthology with a donation.

The index of prolific, posting poets, partcipating is here. This year's 'surprise find' was Poetry on the MRT - coming to a carriage near you very soon.

There is even an ST podcast on SingPoWriMo and poetry with Joshua Ip, Alvin Pang & Deborah Emmanuel.

Images from prior years SingPoWriMos can be found here.

So what's next for SingPoWriMo? 

Perhaps next year's SingPoWriMo could go regional and become AseanPoWriMo??
 

Happy Mothers Day

Happy Mothers Day Mum & Rima

To My Mother

Because I feel that, in the Heavens above,
The angels, whispering to one another,
Can find, among their burning terms of love,
None so devotional as that of “Mother,"
Therefore by that dear name I long have called you—
You who are more than mother unto me,
And fill my heart of hearts, where Death installed you
In setting my Virginia’s spirit free.
My mother—my own mother, who died early,
Was but the mother of myself; but you
Are mother to the one I loved so dearly,
And thus are dearer than the mother I knew
By that infinity with which my wife
Was dearer to my soul than its soul-life.

Edgar Allan Poe

Me Migrant

On 1 May 2016, Mhd Mukul launched his debut english poetry collection, Me Migrant, at The Arts House. The book is published by Ethos Books, translated from Bangla with help from Fariha Imran and Farouk Ahammed and transcreated by Cyril Wong, with input on several poems from Marc Nair.

The High Commissioner of Bangladesh launched the book while many - over a hundred, by my reckoning - of Muhammed Mukul’s friends at Healthserve, in the migrant worker and literary communities were in attendance.

“Md Mukul Hossine was born in Patgram, Bangladesh, and has a Bachelor’s degree in Social Sciences. In 2008, he arrived in Singapore and has been working in its construction sector. Mukul writes poems, novels, and short stories. He enjoys composing poetry to remember his mother back home. His novel, Buker Simanaye Sukh (Happiness at Heart’s Edge) and his poetry collection Apurna Vasana (Unfulfilled Desire) have been published in Bangladesh. His other works have also appeared in anthologies. Mukul has spent many long nights writing poetry. His favourite poet is Rabindranath Tagore.” - Ethos Books

Md Mukul and his book are currently receiving a lot of attention in the Singapore media. This focus is a welcome change from the othering and simplistic political dialogue surrounding migrant workers. The media gaze and ‘celebrity’ opportunities should not sanitise, absolve and/or distract from the need to recognise: 

• Md Mukul is not just one thing. He is a writer, a worker, a friend with a warm smile, a son, a muslim, a degree holder etc. Let's celebrate the multiple, complex narratives and routes that make up each human being rather than identity politics that privilege a single tribe & punch down on others 
• the poetry is pretty good
• the heartfelt longing for his mother is something we all share - but most of us are privileged enough not to have to sacrifice so much to support our families
• there is a need to have a deeper, genuine conversation about the role of migrant workers in Singapore that goes beyond sentiment, recognises their significant, ‘white washed’ contribution to national myths and their status as an underclass. Such a conversation should consider whether it’s acceptable to preserve such an underclass or should there be a road map for reform so migrant workers have the right to change employers, choose their own medical care, have their days off respected, have proper accommodation and food etc 
• a society built solely on pragmatic utilitarianism, where everyone is seen as an economic input, will find it difficult, especially during worsening economic times, to build unity and community unless opportunities and a future are provided for the less powerful and privileged 

Don't just buy Md Mukul's book, please support those on the ground providing much needed help to, and recommendations benefitting, migrant workers such as Healthserve, TWC2 & HOME.

Images from other SGLit Migrant Worker Poetry events

Images from the HOME Showtime Pageant 

Wedding, Lombok

On distinguishing between 'the character', 'the man' and 'the author':

"It will always be impossible to know, for the good reason that all writing is itself this special voice, consisting of several indiscernible voices, and that literature is precisely the invention of this voice, to which we cannot assign a specific origin: literature is that neuter, that composite, that oblique into which every subject escapes, the trap where all identity is lost, beginning with the very identity of the body that writes."

Death of the Author, Roland Barthes, Trans Richard Howard
 

Written Country

Written Country: The History of Singapore through Literature was launched at Kinokuniya last Saturday. The book is published by Landmark Books and edited by Gwee Li Sui. 

This anthology tells Singapore’s history through excerpts of prose and poetry. A brief informative commentary on key events from the fall of Singapore to the death of Lee Kuan Yew accompanies the literary texts. 

Gwee’s introduction sets out the editorial principles guiding his approach to the selection and arrangement of the texts. I like Gwee’s discussion of: 

• the ’factually sound and the emotionally consistent’, 
• the play between first hand and imagined experience, 
• how history and literature relate to each other

What is the quality that literature possesses that makes history come alive and something more  than a list of observed facts and descriptions?

In the very first text, Lim Thean Soo demonstrates this quality when he writes about the schoolboy who runs to the concrete roof of his family home to watch the shelling and counter shelling, and the bombs falling across Singapore on the 15th February 1942.

Gwee notes, inter alia, writers form characters that possess ’some quality of having lived through time’ and possessing deeper forms of knowledge by ‘allowing information to be thought back to us - accordingly rethought, made meaningful.’

Gwee writes ‘[a]s ... texts enter specific moments, they effectively give back to events their emotions and, in this way, generate reflections and commentaries from within.’

At the Kino launch: 

• Rick Buck Song Koh read Completion of Toa Payoh New Town
• Meira Chand read an excerpt from A Different Sky on the Hock Lee Bus Riots. 
• Marc Nair read his poem, Mas Selamat from Postal Code
• Mhd Sharif Udin read his poem, Little India Riot: Velu and a History in Bengali 

The book also contains prose excerpts and poems from Alfian Sa’at, Robert Yeo, Said Zahari, Goh Sin Tub, Dave Chua, Christine Chia, Gopal Baratham, Stella Kon, Boey Kim Cheng, Felix Cheong, Toh Hsien Minh, Tania De Rozario and others.

The book is a gateway drug encouraging the consumption of other works of leading Singapore writers.

Landmark’s founder, Goh Eck Kheng, did not expect Gwee to do so much work editing the book. Gwee probably did not expect to do so much work either. He ended up looking at a ‘couple of thousand Singaporean English titles’ and whittled that down to 54 pieces. Gwee’s expression after the suggestion of another volume of literature covering pre-war events can be seen above.

My only other question is where was the kachang puteh and potong ice cream?

Rashid at the Sail

"He remembered when he was a child, maybe about nine years old, massaging his mother’s feet. Pressing his little thumbs into her rough, calloused flesh as hard as he could. Feeling the warmth and softness beneath the dry, crackled skin and trying to smooth out all her tension and worry. When did the quiet comfort in each other’s company disappear? He loved his mother. Very much. It was just that she loved his brother more."

Excerpt from Rashid at The Sail, a story in my book, We Rose Up Slowly

In this story a young man, kicked out of home by his mother, retreats to his brother’s luxury condominium at The Sail to work out what to do with his life.

The story was written in 2014 and 2015 and was inspired by:

• my personal trainer, Rizam. The basic plot and characters were developed with Rizam while i worked out in the gym. Rizam was my first ‘non-work’ friend in Singapore back in 2002.
• a Tessa Hadley story in The New Yorker, Experience

Rashid at the Sail:

• is set at The Sail in the heart of the modern corporate core of SGP, Marina Bay, where you can literally walk 70 steps to work. When I worked at One Raffles Quay I used to eat pasta once a week from Da Paola at the foot of The Sail
• is about family, loneliness giving birth to exploration, breach and consequence, with an unethical act leading to a new place, and ultimately reconciliation
• Other themes include yearning for something more, taking responsibility, looking to escape ordinariness, trying to find purpose, how to live - not just go through the motions, being envious of a brother & wanting to break out to be your own person
• “He didn’t even glance at the Merlion.”

In some ways this is an anti-Merlion story. The Merlion (that consumer staple of Sing Lit) means nothing to our protagonist whose inspiration is gained from another SingLit icon: a kite, representing the independence and agency of individuals rather than a contrived, 'marketing driven solution'. See Dave Chua's, The Beating & Other Stories, for a story with a Kite in it.

• “He fell hard for this vision of himself, built on the shifting sands of selective nostalgia.”
  
  Rashid finds purpose in idealising a relationship from the past. This gives him a new role for the future: to mean something to his brother's son.

There are also references in this story to: 

• TV studios at Caldecott Hill. I went there several times during the first season of Singapore Idol in 2004 to watch Jeassea, Rizam’s ex wife sing
• The Biggest Loser - Asia. I’ve never seen it, never wanted to see it. Pass me another beer please.
• Hibiscus Royal Slings, are a cocktail at Lantern, the chill out bar on the top of the Fullerton Bay Hotel. This is where an FX Trader lost his life jumping from the roof after a few too many drinks.
• Expat Life is a typo - it should be Expat Living
• A plastic diorama of the Petronas Towers - representing a connection with Malaysia
• Those infamous on line sites: The Online Citizen, The Real Singapore & SammyBoy
• A magician in Bradford - famous for Cleo the girl in a goldfish bowl - and a wrestler from Atlanta, Georgia who share the same name as your favourite author
• Another lunch time eating place, Lau pa sat
• Bromsgrove. My mother taught there. We lived nearby until I was 11 when we emigrated to Australia. Bromsgrove houses the National Telephone Kiosk Collection and is close to the Lickey Hills.
• tapas at Duxton Hill Road, KopiO at Everton Park, Milo Godzillas beside the infinity pool at Ku De Ta, poetry readings at BooksActually, live music at Haji Lane. 
• the presents, designer underwear and a fountain pen, are a reference to gifts from a student to her law lecturer

Shanghai

"The past is what you remember,
imagine you remember,
convince yourself you remember,
or pretend you remember."

Old Times, Harold Pinter

Waiting for a taxi, Singapore

Thinking about WG Sebald's Manchester in the Max Ferber section of The Emigrants.

This is the closest I get in literature to the time and place of my birth in Manchester at the end of the 60s. On arrival Sebald travels through Didsbury on his way to his lodgings. Did he pass the place of my birth? He writes of dour, grey days in a decaying city long since past its best, his only solace a teas-made with its reassuring lime green fluorescent clock face.

Max Ferber is based on Frank Auerbach, who was put on a plane to England at the start of the war by his parents who were deported a few years later and died in the camps. 

Buddhist Lodge, Kim Yam Road

"He felt closer to dust, he said, than to light, air or water. There was nothing he found so unbearable as a well-dusted house, and he never felt more at home than in places where things remained undisturbed, muted under the grey, velvety sinter let when matter dissolved, little by little, into nothingness."

W G Sebald, The Emigrants

Here are some of W G Sebald's writing tips from a student at the University of East Anglia where he taught up until the time of his death in 2001. These provide a wonderful insight into his work.

Also here is the Michael Silverblatt KRCW Bookworm W G Sebald interview dated 6 Dec 2001. He died just over a week later on 14 December 2001of a heart aneurysm near Norwich.