The gentle soul of Singaporean poetry :

Pivotal role of a public poet in nation building

By Ranga CHANDRARATHNA

[Part i]

Edwin Thumboo is one of Singapore's most distinguished poets, an Emeritus Professor of English (1997), at the National University of Singapore. He is, undoubtedly, Asia's most eminent Anglophone poet, whose repertoire of writings and academic papers have been studied in universities all over the world.

The life and times of Edwin Thumboo

Edwin Nadason Thumboo (born 22 November 1933) is an award-winning Singaporean poet and academic, who is regarded as one of the pioneers of English literature in Singapore.

Edwin Thumboo comes from a large family with five sisters and two brothers. His childhood in a house nestled at the foothills of Mandai hills was seemingly idyllic. When I attended the Singapore Writers' Festival, I had the rare privilege of an escorted tour to Mandai by Professor Thumboo.

Thumboo has written several poems claiming time and again how his early days sensitised him to nature's beauty at Mandai spending his happy childhood there.

After his early education at Victoria School he entered the University of Malaya in 1957, After graduation, with B.A. honours, Thumboo entered the civil service and worked for nine years including the role of assistant secretary in the Singapore Telephone Board prior to becoming an academic. Thumboo received a Ph.D. in 1970 completing a thesis on African literature.

He was first appointed as Professor of English in January 1979. Professor Thumboo also served as the Head of the Department of English Language and Literature (1977-1993), the first Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (1980-1991) and Professorial Fellow (1995-2002).

As an academic, he has taught Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama, the Romantic poets, Singapore and Malaysian Literatures, as well as courses in creative writing. His research interests included The English Novels of Forster, Lawrence, Conrad) and the Novels of Empire (Kipling, etc.), Commonwealth Literature (Bessie Head, etc.), and Shakespeare (the Roman Plays).

Prof. Thumboo introduced the study of Commonwealth new literatures in English. Another key initiative of Thumboo was the introduction of English Language as a major so that the department's graduates could be better trained to undertake English teaching in schools and junior colleges.

Thumboo's works

Prof. Thumboo has contributed to the Singapore Arts scene chiefly in the area of literature. His works on poetry include: Rib of Earth (1956), Gods Can Die (1977), Ulysses by the Merlion (1979), and A Third Map (1993); Friends, (2002), Still Travelling (2008), Bring The Sun (2008) and two collections on nursery rhymes: Child's Delight 1 & 2.

In addition to his work and contribution to poetry, Edwin Thumboo has edited and published numerous critical articles and anthologies covering subjects such as Singapore and Malaysian Literature, The World Englishes and served as the General Editor of several anthologies.

Some of these works include Seven Poets: Singapore/Malaysia, An Anthology (1973), The Second Tongue: An Anthology of Poetry from Malaysia and Singapore (1979), Anthology of ASEAN Literatures: The Poetry of Singapore (1985), and The Fiction of Singapore (1990). He is Consulting Editor for World Englishes and Editorial Consultant for Westerly; he is also a member of the Editorial Board of Solidarity.

Edwin Thumboo as a foremost anglophone poet

The most extended discussion of his poetry is by Thumboo's long time friend and poet, Ee Tiang Hong's Responsibility and Commitment: The Poetry of Edwin Thumboo (1997). His former colleague and long time friend, Hong Kong based Jonathan Webster has written and published some very insightful linguistic and most recently interpretation of Edwin Thumboo's work.

One of the salient roles that Prof. Edwin Thumboo plays in the literary landscape of Singapore is the role of a public poet. Apart from the Yeatsian sensibility and aesthetics (It is a fact that Prof. Thumboo is inspired by W.B Yeats and his poetry), his remarkable corpus of poetry can also be considered as potent social commentaries and critiques, a fact continues to be of relevance even to his latest poetry. On his role as a public poet, Ee Tiang Hong in Responsibility and Commitment describes in detail the genesis of Singaporean literary landscape and the pivotal role Prof. Edwin Thumboo played in it.

"...At any rate, literature in English that emerged presented an alternative, perhaps, a more relevant, if not more zestful contributions, to writings in the Anglo-Saxon tradition. The field was particularly congenial in the light of Thumboo's longstanding interest in mythology, ancient religion, ancient history and physical anthropology. He followed up the formal study with a literary safari to Africa.

The African experience brought him within the ambit of Third World Writing and furnished, or confirmed, his rationale for a public stance and a political commitment to his poetry. Where the writer under the colonial regime had no role to play, Thumboo concluded, the writer in the new nation, in which political power was vested in the people, had certain functions and responsibilities in the search for a common destiny. This relationship between the writer and his society was the major theme of his 'introduction' to The Flowering Tree, his first compilation of writings from Singapore and Malaysia. The line of his new thinking showed how far he had moved from the Anglo-American literary and critical tradition , in particular, the narrow academic 'practical criticism' approached represented by F.R Leavis and the Cambridge School. The major shift may be seen in the following statement:

We should restrain our sophistication and accept that in the given situation, the writer must explain his society, bring into focus the forces, whether healthy, or pernicious, which move society. Social comment will have a better chance of being understood, will more likely succeed in generating interest...There is a need to demonstrate to the ordinary intelligence the relevance of what is written. (1979:1-4)

Thumboo's own public poems made their appearance in this anthology, and comprised a major part of his second collection Gods Can Die (1977). However, while the general drift of the book indicated tenuous commitment to the framework of national objectives, many of the poems were in fact critical of the ways in which the objectives were being implemented and scathing of such bureaucrats and opportunists had begun to surface in the new social arrangement...the exemplary poems came in good time, emerging in his third volume, Ulysses by the Merlion (1979). Significantly the title piece was dedicated to Maurice Baker, a well-regarded member of the official echelon. The manifested object of Ulysses by the Merlion is an adaptation of the Greek myth, but the latent intent is a loud and clear declaration of his identification with the ideals and aspirations of his nation. Kirpal Singh's evaluation of the poems clarifies its ontological and contextual status. It points out that the poem contains 'a kind of mid-belief which stops short of affirmation' but in sum gives 'a wider, more representative , meaning to his own quest. In a deeply experiential way his quest becomes symbolic of Singapore's quest, his history, the nation's history and his response, the nation's response. "

Ee Tiang Hong further observes that this salient characteristic in Thumboo's poetry is prominently figured in some of his poems such as The National Library, Singapore, Evening by Batok Town and Temasek. According to Ee Tiang Hong, two trends are manifested by the poems; 'first extending his repertoire for dealing with public issues; second regenerating the lyrical strain that he feels had been muted for too long'. Hong , however, points out that as a consequence of "veer too quickly from one pole to the other in attempting to attend to both claims; consequently poems lack the intensity, even spontaneity of the personal rapture on the one hand and the incisive penetration of the social framework on the other"

"The National Library, Singapore

(For Hedwig Anuar)

Who could have known

This edifice, this heart,

Humming with the voices of Western ages,

Was there, waiting beyond our

Father's hopes and Eastern dreams.

You grew, first a tentative

Stranger, a custodian of the

Word, then teacher, generous giver,

To our people, the young and old,

In search of fact, legend, myth.

As you uncoil the spirals of each mind,

Words become colour, image, and question

To push the imagination yet again

You unfold, arrange and link

Our languages and histories,

Their matrix and grandeur. Faces

Smile, merge into mosaic

So we discover what we are,

What lies beyond class-room, in

Our selves, our city

The earth, air, sea and stars.

La Cha irritates the Dragon

King and learns a lesson

While sporting softly with the gopis,

Krishna makes the garden bloom.

Warring Alexander starts his Asian tour,

Where Confucius, Buddha, Christ,

Muhammed urge the betterment of Man.

In that corner, a computer wakes

Against the wall, one-eyed

Picasso puzzles, to instruct

Preserve the past, ensure the future:

City and people move, proceed;

Landscape changed; Team is at work.

The rush of knowledge must be met,

Converted. Yet must the spirit thrive,

On sunsets, quiet trees, gibbons

In a painting, the life of Sages.

So the bud of light that lies within,

Blossoms, renews at Stamford Road

In this edifice, this heart"

Evening by Batok town

My day begins to heal, regain

A modicum of poise as evening takes

Nostalgia which the sky implies,

The sun's gradual genuflection seems

Ample in the eye's receiving centre.

Clouds, middling to spectacular, twist

To disengage while random access grows

Alert, retrieving gall and honey in the

Moment, as memory anoints earlier days,

As earlier days...this sky, again.

No rainbow yet; perhaps there will be

None this time. But, carved by light,

Clouds still intimate. A troop of dwarfs

Are on manoeuvers; La Cha about to quantum

Leap; a grey-gold dragon transmutes

Receding blue into flared vermilion as

It claws etch the first stars, further

East, Krishna's chariot stands resplendent

While Arjuna, cleansed of doubt, now arms,

Reluctantly. Below

These deep recurrences,

These shifting runes

That touched my father, now my son,

And so all three again, are images:

Vigilant Bukit Batok topped by radar;

MRT accompanying Avenue 5;

Four-point blocks, JC, food-centre;

A young couple held by privacy

Amid strolling families and darting

Children practicing their mother-tongue.

An impatient taxi's irritating honk

Sharpens the sense which sees to feel

The festival bunting, the three prosperities.

There was a time, quite recent,

When little Guilin had no pools.

Before that green slope of hills

Descended into plain and swamp.

Before that an old geology. Squatters

Cleared land, directed streams, built

Ponds, a temple to guardian deities; then,

The quarry-road the Indians made, re-named

Perang, to meet the lurking yellow peril.

Out of such energies, such history, a town.

Yet high -rise and high -ways,

The new breed in search of

Gleaming jobs, the computer-mind,

Turn memory shorter than the land's,

Or that kept whole by auguries of

Spirit, descent of custom, the pain

Of friendship; or the spell in the rose ...

Unless brought into the blood's necessity

By an evening sky, by immemorial

Language of cloud and light

Ee Tiang Hong citing Chin Woon-Ping, points out that "that most striking feature of Thumboo's poetry to be 'his sense of social responsibility, based on a conscious decision to eschew personal preoccupations and to be a public poet dealing with crucial issues of a developing nation'.

(To be continued)