Singapore-the place of poetry

Cold Mountain is a place that can also mean a state of mind. - Seamus Heaney

For the past half a century Edwin Thumboo has been a formidable presence in the Singapore cultural scene. As a poet, cultural critic university professor cum administrator and public intellectual he has played a pivotal role in giving point and direction to the work of culture in Singapore. His involvement in the public sphere has had a palpably beneficial impact in that it has served to focus on certain key problem- spaces in the cultural life of the country.

Thumboo's editions of Singapore and Malaysian writing have had a deep influence on the thought and imagination of his times His latest anthology, 'Words: Poems of Singapore and Beyond' represents a continuation of that effort. It carries forward the acts of re-definition and transformation that he so productively began decades ago. The title 'Words' brings to mind Jean-Paul Sartre's brilliant autobiography, 'The Words' in which he famously said, 'I began my life, as I shall no doubt end it: amidst books.'

I have known Edwin for nearly twenty five years. When I was the Director of the Humanities Program and the coordinator of the writer-in-residence program at the East-West Center, I invited him to Honolulu. He spent a few months with us; during this period I had the privilege of having extended discussions with him on Southeast Asian literature, the role of English, problems and prospects of the post-colonial moment, varieties of literary criticism, the self-sustaining dynamism of post-colonial literature, the bone-structure of new English writing and so on. We continued these discussions when we met in Hong Kong and Illinois and other venues in the company of such distinguished scholars as Braj Kachru, Yamuna Kachru, and Larry Smith.

'Words' is an anthology of poetry containing over one hundred and seventy poems. Many of them are from Singapore and Malaysia; but there are poems from other parts of the world as well. (Two poems by Montage contributor and the Perth-based writer, Sunil Govinnage, are included in this collection.) Apart from the works of writers from the Asian region, there are also poems that have made an indelible impression on the Anglophone cultural memory such as Yeats' 'Sailing to Byzantium' and Dylan Thomas' Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night' showcased in this volume.

As Edwin Thumboo believes, his anthology will fulfill four objectives. First, to provide a selection of Singapore poems in English, arranged under four broad rubrics: identity, homeland, living, words.

To be sure, these themes are overlapping and a poem located in one section could just as easily be assigned to another. Second, to include poems in World Englishes which, among other things, would indicate the broad range as well as the commonly shared experience of colonialism; they invariably generate common recognitions. Third, to focus on translations from Chinese, Malay, and Tamil. He wishes to call attention to the fact that there is more to poetry in Singapore than the works in English. Fourth, through a section that includes shot poems, haiku, Pantun, to encourage teachers and students to inspire them to writing poetry.

One of the aims of this volume is, to use Thumboo's words, to contribute to the 'enterprise of bringing poetry to Singapore students.' Apart from that pedagogical ambition, the editor has sought to raise a number of issues that are directly related to linguistic creativity in Singapore: what is the role of English? How should it be fashioned to display the deeper structures of feeling of its citizens? How has colonialism inflected creative writing? What are the ramifications of textual production? What are the forms and shapes of evaluative norms?

In my observations on this volume, I wish to focus on the topic of the place of poetry - the pun, of course, is intended. In order to understand the true dimensions of themes such as national identity, cultural belonging, post-coloniality, globalization, cultural modernity - themes that writers from Singapore invariably wrestle with - the idea of place is important. The concept of place is becoming a crucial site of investigation in both humanities and social sciences, and with the newer developments in disciplines such as cultural geography, the idea of place is being re-interpreted in the light of modern cultural theory.

The two terms, space and place, in ordinary parlance, are used interchangeably; however, there is a clear distinction between the two. Space, like time, generates the fundamental co-ordinates of human life. However, when human beings invest space with human meaning and when it becomes a site for human interaction, it assumes the nomenclature of place.

Even the simple act of naming a space turns it into place. Although this distinction is largely accepted by most writers, the writings of the eminent French thinker Henri Lefebvre, (the author of The Production of Social Space) complicate matters by introducing the term social space.

The well-known social scientist John Agnew, has identified three basic aspects of place as 'meaningful location.' They are location - locale - sense of place. When we deploy the term place we normally refer to a specific physicality. This is the meaning of location.

Second, we need to keep in mind the fact that places are not stationary. By local, Agnew refers to the material context for the activation of social relations; it signifies the real shape of place in which citizens live out their lives as individuals. Agnew employs the term 'sense of place' to denote the subjective and emotional attachments and allegiances that citizens generate towards a place. There are, of course, disagreements between leading theorists of space. While David Harvey focuses in the boundedness of place, Doreen Massey talks about its porosity and hybridity.

Similarly, humanists have their own way of categorizing and re-describing place. One common trifurcation among humanities scholars consists of territory - land - soil. The term territory refers to place as belonging to state. Land signifies the intervening civic space between territory and soil; it is vitally connected with the economy and modes of production.

Soil is inextricably linked with cultural realities and emotional attachment and past legacies. Soil is almost always possessed by the community. There are, then, different ways of approaching the concept of place. What is indubitably clear is that it has a multi-faceted valence, and we need to be aware of the complex of forces that traverse this concept.

For creative writers and literary critics, the idea of place carries a plenitude of contradictory meanings. Place, according to them, needs to be understood as a palimpsest ; here various layers of sedimented meanings co-exist, some half-hidden -the variegated traces of daily life. The idea of self-location and self-creation are vitally connected to place.

Ronald Schuchard, in his introduction to a work by the Noble-laureate Seamus Heaney, remarks, 'the aura of place imposes itself on one poet's imagination; another poet imposes his singular vision on a plural place; places become havens or heavens; they drive the poet into spiritual or physical exile, they provide poetry with its nourishments and distractions; they liberate imagination and darken consciousness.' This observation points to the many-sidedness of the relationship between poet and place.

Seamus Heaney himself, in a remarkably astute passage says that, 'the poetic imagination in its strongest manifestation imposes its vision upon a place rather than accepts a vision from it; and that this visionary imposition is never exempt from the imagination's antithetical ability to subvert its own creation. In other words, once the place has been brought into existence, it is inevitable that it be unwritten.' This is indeed a statement that will warm the cockles of the hearts of deconstructionists! In most poems, place stages its own deconstruction.

Many of the poems by Singaporean writers collected in Thumboo's anthology relate to the theme of place. They examine the conflicts between real and symbolic places, places of the world and places of the mind, the predicaments of place, issues of cultural dislocation and alienation, problems of bi-location, through the topos of place. Boey Kim Cheng, in his poem titled 'Placenames.' Says

So late in his life

My father starts naming vanished places;

Buffalo Road, Robinsons,

The arcade and Satay club

Places now remote as the stars

In a galaxy already extinct.

And Heng Siok Tian asks the pertinent question

Do I hurry along street plans and measure land use

To draw lines and shapes for my canvas.

Edwin Thumboo begins his poem titled' Island',

which recaptures the powers of modernization with the lines

Once

There was a quiet island

With a name.

Arthur Yap recounts through vivid imagery the sights and sounds that invest place with meaning and emotion.

Here in the night, trees sink deeply downward

The sound of moonlight, walking on black grass

Magnifies the clear hard calls of a nightjar

As I stated earlier, the topos of place opens an inviting gate on to the resonances of many of the poems by Singaporean writers gathered in this volume.(Interestingly, the literary categorization of topos refers both to theme and place.) One of the most memorable pieces in this anthology is Edwin Thumboo's poem, 'Uncle Never Knew.' Here is the product of a poet working at the peak of his powers displaying the immense range and ingenuity of his poetic intelligence. It exemplifies clearly the way that place becomes a palimpsest. It is a poem that poignantly remembers the vicissitudes of the life of the land and it presses against the bone of Singaporean selfhood, thereby securing its most subtle effects.

He lived - if you could call it that - two streets off

Boat Quay north. Tranquil as leaves left in a tea cup.

Always alone but never lonely

His life, though outwardly simple, is full of complexity as it was exposed to the full fury of history

Great houses are history, clan, essential unity; belief.

A way of life which brooks no breaking of fidelity.

The motive force behind this poem is the power of memory as it engages sharp-edged realities; and in the process illuminates past and present, history and culture through the privileged topos of place.

It is fascinating to observe the way in which the awakened language of the poet searches out the inner recesses of memory for comforting recognitions.

The way that place figures in Singapore poetry, giving rise to issues of belonging - belonging to a place physically, symbolically, politically, culturally, spiritually, emotionally - imaginatively - merit close analysis. How place becomes the site of manifold responses of the poet, often contradictory, deserves our careful scrutiny.

I have been discussing the place of poetry in relation to the works of writers from Singapore. The same applies, with equal force and relevance, to Sri Lankan poetry. For example, in the writings of a poet like Jean Arasanayagam, one observe the complex ramifications of place as they uncover pluralities of meaning related to place and invite us to engage in multi-dimensional readings.

In many of her poems she displays a remarkable ability to invest space with symbolic meanings, dark and menacing, suggesting the intense agony of bearing witness to human tragedy and cast-down moments. Her spatial, and indeed spacious, tropes allow her to chart the complications of ambivalence.

The sky grows distant, out of reach as mountains

Fall, pile on fields that turn to ash filled graves

From the burnings of old and finished harvests

So far, I have been using the phrase 'the place of poetry' in two senses - how land gets reconfigured in poetry and the estimation of poetry in social life. As Seamus Heaney points out, a third meaning, and one that is equally compelling, is possible. Commenting on a poem by Yeats, he says that here the place of poetry 'is essentially the stanza form itself, that strong-arched room of eight iambic pentameters rhyming abababcc.'