Desmond & Eric at Books Actually

On 20 March at Books Actually, Eric Valles and Desmond Kon talked about the craft of writing, their literary journeys and their poetry and prose. Both poets have been journalists and have strong theological interests that shines through in their work.

Desmond spoke about his novel, Singular Acts of Endearment (Squirrel Line Press), which recently won an award at the Beverly Hills International Book Award. 

I really enjoy the rich, intricate, ambitious depths of Desmond’s fiction and poetry. I first met Desmond in 2010 at an NUS reading where he read some Haikus and I read my short story We Rose Up Slowly. Recently we caught the wrong bus from Speakeasy and I left him, late in the evening, stranded near a building site on the other side of One Raffles Quay.

Eric talked about his poetry collection After the Fall: Dirges among Ruins (Ethos Books). He read a wonderful poem about the restoration of a mural in Changi prison.

It was a very warm and pleasant evening.

Lombok Wedding & Gunter Grass

Lessons from Gunter Grass: Go for broke. Be careful with your characters.

“Today I know that all things are watching, that nothing goes unseen, that even wallpaper has a better memory than human beings.”

He shared his Schnapps with Salman Rushdie and the BBC’s Harriet Gilbert.

It was Salman Rushdie who said:

“This is what Grass's great novel said to me in its drumbeats: Go for broke. Always try and do too much. Dispense with safety nets. Take a deep breath before you begin talking. Aim for the stars. Keep grinning. Be ruthless. Argue with the world. And never forget that writing is as close as we get to keeping a hold on the thousand and one things--childhood, certainties, cities, doubts, dreams, instants, phrases, parents, loves--that go on slipping like sand, through our fingers."

In 1991, Gunter Grass told The Paris Review:

"As a child I was a great liar. Fortunately my mother liked my lies. I promised her marvellous things. When I was ten years old she called me Peer Gynt. Peer Gynt, she said, here you are telling me marvelous stories about journeys we will make to Naples and so on . . . I started to write down my lies very early. And I continue to do so! I started a novel when I was twelve years old. It was about the Kashubians, who turned up many years later in The Tin Drum, where Oskar’s grandmother, Anna, (like my own) is Kashubian. But I made a mistake in writing my first novel: all the characters I had introduced were dead at the end of the first chapter. I couldn’t go on! This was my first lesson in writing: be careful with your characters."

Goodbye Gunter Grass who left this earth on 13 April 2015.

Go for broke. Be careful with your characters.

A Poetry Reading

A private poetry reading held after hours at Books Actually was held on 29 March 2015.

Cortege, Goodbye Lee Kuan Yew, Kampong Bahru

I waited with the crowds outside a fancy dress shop on Kampong Bahru Road for the funeral cortege to pass by. The rain fell. Families and friends waited together. Everyone was good natured despite the weather. This was history. Passing by. Goodbye Lee Kuan Yew. Goodbye. 

After, Lee Kuan Yew Lying in State

On a clear, golden evening on 27 March 2015 I stood at the corner of Parliament Place and Supreme Court Lane where I took pictures of the elderly, families with young children and those with special needs after they’d paid their respects to Lee Kuan Yew as he lay in State in Parliament House.

Here are some of the images I took.

Tribute, Tanjong Pagar Community Centre

Goodbye Lee Kuan Yew. Yesterday afternoon, I signed the condolence book at Tanjong Pagar Community Centre.

The sticker on a locked exit read: 'What future do Singaporeans want?' This is not a new question. One man, Lee Kuan Yew, dominated that question for a long time and although, several years ago, he faded from direct political involvement, his influence remained. His son the Prime Minister has said that Singapore is at an inflexion point. The question remains and deeper uncertainties prevail.

Several decades ago, he said 'Poetry is a luxury we cannot afford.' That was then when he desired to control the narrative and focus the nation on execution of his agenda rather than imagine other choices. The hope is that now people realise times are different and a just, tolerant, progressive future can be built on the foundation he established.

“Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms, or books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

For a poetic insight into The Man, take a look at the wonderful poetry anthology, A Luxury We Cannot Afford, edited by Joshua Ip and Christine Chia. I have a post on the book here. 

For the perspective of a Singaporean journalist, here is Bertha Henson on LKY.

And here are details of LKY's run in with the CIA & his rejection of their $3.3m bribe.

Vigil, Singapore General Hospital, 18 March 2015

At around 6pm on 18 March 2015, attracted by the prospect of history and an Official Announcement, both of which which never arrived, I waited with a congregation of journalists, cameramen, onlookers, patients, visitors and health workers in front of the lifts and security gates in Block 1 of Singapore General Hospital. I left at around 940pm. These are the images I took.

From 1 September 1939 by W H Auden:

"All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street 
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky: 
There is no such thing as the State 
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame."

Kid, Madrid, Spock & RIP Leonard Nimoy

When I was a boy growing up in Hollywood, Birmingham we played Star Trek. I always played Spock because of my pale white skin, my straight fringed black hair and the shape of my eyes. It wasn’t just something I chose, that’s how a lot of the kids viewed me. Some of them saw me as Bruce Lee or Jai from Tarzan but I liked it best when they saw the Spock in me.

I developed a cool, emotionless demeanour, perfected the Vulcan nerve pinch and we went around the streets on our Raleigh Grifters and Choppers searching for lost cats.  I greeted my friend, aka Capt James T Kirk, with a ‘Live long and prosper.’ I wasn’t very good with the eyebrow but I was good at pretending to be highly logical and intelligent. We made Lego phasers and used a Philips tape recorder for a Tricorder on which we taped pop songs off the radio like ‘Blame It On The Boogie’ and ‘Oliver's Army’.

So goodbye, Leonard Nimoy. Thanks for everything including: 

• Your photographs
• Your support of equal pay for women
• In Search of … (especially the one on Bigfoot)
• Your cool, sinister role in Get Smart
• Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Now that I mention Invasion of the Body Snatchers, **SPOILER ALERT** I do find it remarkable how Donald Sutherland’s closing screech reminds me of Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son. Which brings us nicely to the picture above of somebody’s son running through the light streaming across a spanish square in the afternoon.

Family on a Scooter

Water

If I were called in
To construct a religion
I should make use of water.

Going to church
Would entail a fording
To dry, different clothes;

My liturgy would employ
Images of sousing,
A furious devout drench,

And I should raise in the east
A glass of water
Where any-angled light
Would congregate endlessly.

From Philip Larkin's The Whitsun Weddings, Faber & Faber Ltd, 1964

Larkin looks a little like Eric Morecambe.

MRT, Singapore

Downy Hair

Charmed by a girl's soft ears,
I piled up leaves and burnt them.

How innocent her face
in rising smoke - I longed

to roam the spiral of those ears,
but she clung stiffly

to the tramcar strap, downy
hair fragrant with leafsmoke.

Shinkichi Takahashi

Speakeasy #18: The Valentine Edition

Speakeasy #18 was held at a packed Artistry and featured poets, playwrights, DJs, academics, musicians, teachers and booksellers/publishers/institutions reading their favourite love poetry for Valentine’s Day.

The poetry was eclectic, exuberant and celebratory, and included Pablo Neruda, Dorothy Porter, Arthur Yap, Cyril Wong, ee Cummings, Carol Ann Duffy, Leonard Cohen (Alvin Pang knows him and I understand efforts will be made to get him to SWF this year) etc, etc.

There were several romantic moments including Rene & Kenny’s reading and Philip Holden’s rose for his beloved, not to mention a blow job poem and a couple of lyrical cow pieces.

Speakeasy #17 at The Mill

Speakeasy #17 featured poems, music and dancing from the Banglar Kantha Sahitya Parishad (Banglar Kantha Literary Association). The poems were recited in Bengali and Tamil with English translations read out by Singaporean poets Cyril Wong, Tania De Rozario, Alvin Pang, Marc Nair and Jennifer Champion. 

I blogged about these poets before after the Migrant Worker Poetry Competition at the National Library last November. The Dhaka Tribune has an informative article on the Banglar Kantha Literary Association with comments from Alvin Pang providing some context for their poetry in Singapore.

“We share this city together,” Ping [Sic] said. “Why should one set of human voices be less heard and less valued than others? We all need to listen more attentively to each other. This is a late start, but better late than never.”

The evening was held at The Mill as part of the Destruction and Rebirth Festival.

Not being much of a poet, I talked to a few briefly about cricket and how Bangladesh would fare in the upcoming World Cup. 

Please let me know any names of the poets whose names I didn't catch so I can ensure the captions are correct.