20 Jul

Singapore Book Club

Cyril Wong, Yong Shu Hoong, Aaron Lee and Dr Gwee Li Sui joined the National Book Development Council of Singapore on 20 July for an evening of spirited discussion on Singapore poetry.

This seventh session of the Singapore Book Club featured Singapore Literature Prize 2006 winning works—Frottage and Unmarked Treasure—written by Cyril Wong and Yong Shu Hoong respectively. Aaron Lee, award-winning poet, was the facilitator while Dr Gwee Li Sui, poet and lecturer of English Literature at the National University of Singapore, set the grounds for discussion with a commentary on the Singapore literary scene.

Yong Shu Hoong kick-started the session with a reading of a poem he wrote after the results of the Singapore literature Prize 2006 were announced. Aptly titled Sibling Rivalry, the poem depicts the uncertainty of “winning but not really winning” upon receipt of the news that Frottage had tied for first place with Cyril’s Unmarked Treasure. He also interjects humourously that had they been vicious people, they would probably have wound up fighting!

For his part, Cyril spoke of Unmarked Treasure as the “kind of book that I’ll never write again, being filled with the past agonies of dealing with family and relationships”. Indeed, Dr Leong Liew Goek, one of the judges of the Singapore Literature Prize 2006, felt that Unmarked Treasure was “morbid” in its obsession with death.

Dr Gwee rounded up the session with the startling observation that Cyril and Shu Hoong’s poetry were very much alike. Both had a fragmented outlook, with a disjointedness that arises out of the efforts to express and resolve the ambiguity of relationships.

Organised by the National Book Development Council of Singapore and The Arts House, the Singapore Book Club is supported by the National Arts Council and serves as a platform to showcase literary works with strong local flavours. The event takes place on the third Friday every other month and has hosted many noted literary figures such as Gerrie Lim, author of In Lust We Trust and Ng Yi Sheng, playwright and author of poetry collection, Last Boy.

24 Jul

Like Life, Death and the Universe

A Shakespearean Journey

On the 24th of July, the Singapore Writers Festival presented a pre-Festival event entitled “No Great Shakes?  Great Shakes!” conducted by John McRae, Special Professor of Language in Literature Studies at the University of Nottingham. 

Professor McRae began this educational journey by reciting the “seven ages of man” lyric poem from William Shakespeare’s As You Like It.  Ever the consummate performer, he breathed life into every word with his vivid and gripping rendition.  This is also proof that Shakespeare, as writer, dramatist and creator of these lines, is already the showman’s showman. 

Professor McRae’s delivery of other Shakespearean lines was no less dramatic.  It was simple, really—he describes himself as an academic who happens to be theatrical.  Although lectures can easily become dry and boring, he emphatically declares, “I don’t allow boredom.” 

“I call it a gig, you see,” he said in a private interview, “when I’m supposed to call it a lecture and be academic and boring, and I just don’t do that. I call it a gig because it’s a performance, it’s a show.”

And indeed it was. At the event, he performed an entertaining string of readings of Shakespeare quotes with edifying interpretations, and even afforded a self-deprecating jibe at academia and instruction with his take on the lines “a tale/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury/ Signifying nothing” from Macbeth.   

He calls Juliet’s famous “Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?” lament “pretty heavy stuff!”  He interprets Juliet’s words as “get rid of your family and I’ll get rid of mine”, in all, a very “postmodern crisis of identity”, he says, and all this written centuries before postmodernism was invented. 

In the audience was Chris Mooney-Singh, Programme Director of Word Forward.  He says Professor McRae “displayed a real gift in shedding light on Shakespearean texts” and calls it “an inspiring evening”.  He also confirms that Word Forward will stage a Shakespeare production “perhaps in the new year for the general public and schools”.

As described, Professor McRae introduced the entire session with that magnificent lyric from As You Like It, and he said that those lines were “like life, death and the universe in twenty-five lines”.  As was evident from the rest of the evening, all of Shakespeare’s words echo human existence and reality, and the event was indeed a fine slice of Shakespeareana for the modern soul.

About the Professor

John McRae has been Special Professor of Language in Literature Studies in the School of English Studies at the University of Nottingham since 1992 and is now Senior Teaching Fellow. He has been invited by the British Council to hold talks in more than 50 countries. His favourite Shakespeare play Hamlet, because it’s perfect. In my experience there are a few absolutely perfect creations on this earth. Things like Macchu Picchu in Peru- it’s a perfect creation. The Taj Mahal is a perfect creation. You walk in and you see the Taj Mahal, and you are moved. Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus- you walk in to the room where that painting is and your ankles melt. Hamlet is perfect in every way. His favourite Shakespeare quote Depends on the mood I’m in. If you’ve got time I’ll give you a list of about a hundred. One that people don’t know, just to give you an unfamiliar one, is from King Lear and it’s that wonderful scene between King Lear and Gloucester. They’re talking, talking, and there’s a pause. And Gloucester says ‘And that’s true too.’ I love that. It’s almost Zen. And there are times when life is like that and you just think ‘and that’s true too’- it’s got a wave of sadness and a wave of wisdom and a wave of acceptance. And it’s a kind of an unnecessary line. It’s not helping the story. It’s a common line; it’s not poetry like ‘the primrose path of dalliance’ or ‘tomorrow, tomorrow and tomorrow’. But this is the kind of unexpected moment of total calm in the middle of that immense tragedy. His favourite Shakespeare word ‘Fardels’. In the ‘To be or not to be’ speech. I mentioned it before as the word that didn’t come through to the English Language, it didn’t remain. It remains outside and it’s only in Shakespeare. And people like [Lord] Byron and [Lawrence] Sterne quote that word- use as if it were their own- but they’re actually sort of saying, ‘thanks Bill’.

By Ng Kiat Han

02 Aug

Asia Pacific Publishing Convention 2007

Prince Hotel | Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

The Asia Pacific Publishing Convention (APPC) is the annual no-nonsense learning and networking convention for Print, Online and Mobile Media in Asia. It aims to help publishers serve their content, shape their presentations, work with strategic pipeline partners, co-brand and discover new commercial value.

This year’s theme, “integrate publishing with digital technology profitably”, is an apt reflection of the novel challenges that the publishing industry faces. APCC was attended by 247 delegates from 16 countries representing 128 publishing companies and involved 50 speakers and moderators from 13 countries and 41 exhibitors.

The National Book Development Council of Singapore is proud to be a supporter of this event.

Publishers Writers Network

The fourth session of the Publishers Writers Network saw aspiring authors mingling with Dilip Mukerjea, best-selling author of the Creative Brain series.

Mr Mukerjea encouraged creative endeavours by conducting on-the-spot writing exercises for members of the audience. “If you don’t execute your ideas, they die,” he said emphatically. 
Some of the exercises included origami, to reveal the creative possibilities inherent on a blank page, obituary-writing, to define and reveal the drive to write, and word association, as a means to counter writer’s block.

Haresh Sharma Comes Under Study

Hapless students of English Literature who have often bemoaned the lack of writings on Singapore works will no doubt be glad to see the publication of Interlogue: Studies in Literature Vol 6: Haresh Sharma.

Interlogue: Studies in Literature Vol 6: Haresh Sharma is a comprehensive account that addresses the 60 or so works of the 41-year-old playwright, situating them in socio-political analysis.

It is part of a series focusing on aspects of Singapore literature. Edited by poet and literary and cultural critic Kirpal Singh, Interlogue has also covered the works of writer Robert Yeo and various Singapore poets.

This latest volume is written by David Birch, 56, a professor of communications and cultural studies at Deakin University in Australia.

The Briton became interested in Singapore theatre while working as a teacher of English language and linguistics at the National University of Singapore for five years from 1980. He subsequently befriended Sharma and TNS artistic director Alvin Tan.

He spent about a year doing the research and writing, with the drama company providing materials like scripts, programmes and newspaper articles.

“Much of Singapore theatre was so bad in the early days, like The Stage Club people, who were essentially a bunch of expats doing Noel Coward, drinking sherry and eating biscuits,” he says.

“Haresh and TNS committed to putting a Singapore identity and voice on stage. And they’ve been doing so for 20 years.”

His own favourites are the monologues, like the 1999 Completely With/Out Character, a one-man show starring Paddy Chew, the first Singaporean to publicly announce his HIV-positive status.

“He’s become more confident about his voice and his material over the years,” says Birch of Sharma.

He cites the example of the 2003 Mardi Gras and the 2004 Top Or Bottom, a pair of gay plays that featured the same characters.

He says: “Mardi Gras explored stereotypes, and in Top Or Bottom he moved on to a more sensitive characterisation. He learns from his work and his major strength is that he’s an extraordinarily good listener and facilitator of other people’s ideas.”

As for Sharma himself, he prefers to think of the upcoming book as something that is “not about me”.

“It’s a book about TNS,” he says. “It’s very difficult to separate the two.”

Haresh Sharma, resident playwright of The Necessary Stage (TNS), had his 1993 play about mental illness, Off Centre, chosen as an O-level text this year.

He also won his first Life! Theatre Award—for Best Original Script—in March for last year’s Fundamentally Happy, a drama about paedophilia. His plays have also been staged in places like Japan and Scotland this year.

Interlogue: Studies In Singapore Literature Vol 6: Haresh Sharma will be available in major bookstores from Aug 24 onwards, and is priced at $22.80 (without GST).

So You Think You Can Write A Novel?


So You Think You Can Write a Novel is an anthology of novel excerpts by 19 Singapore writers spanning several genres—mystery, romance, science, fiction, fantasy, contemporary mainstream, historical and more.

Each excerpt is introduced with a short description of its genre and a summary of the novel from which it is taken. The contributors range in age from 14 to 46 and include award-winning writers as well as many new writers who will be published for the first time.

This anthology came about as a result of the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), a month-long online writing challenge to write a 50,000-word novel in the month of November. For more information, visit http://www.NaNoWriMo.org

The event only took off in 2005 when the Sunday Times did a feature on it. Since then, it has garnered support from a very active Singapore chapter and featured some exceptional writing talents.

Rosemary Lim, the editor of this anthology, first took part in this writing challenge in 2003. When she became the Municipal Liaison for Singapore in 2005, she put forth the proposal of compiling novel excerpts from the winners of the 2005 NaNoWriMo event.

Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Pte Ltd , the publisher of this anthology, was keen on the idea because of the book’s potential as a guide for genres and also because it encouraged budding Singapore writers. Ms Violet Phoon, Managing Editor, Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Pte Ltd, explains the book’s winning formula: “We found the concept interesting — a book that offered readers a choice of different genres of writing, like a tasting menu, that would then lead them to explore the genres they enjoy. Moreover, each excerpt was a self-contained story and there was a blend of published and new writers with different levels of sophistication.”