24 Aug

Storytelling, Singapore style

By Ng Kiat Han

“We are all interested in stories,” said R Ramachandran, 64, executive director of the National Book Development Council of Singapore, “because stories are the basis of all imagination and creation.” Mr Ramachandran was speaking at the opening ceremony of this year’s Singapore International Story Telling Festival at the Arts House on the evening of August 24th 2007.

Also present was Guest-of-Honour Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports and Second Minister for Information, Communication and the Arts Dr Vivian Balakrishnan, who was delighted to be present but commented on the dearth of children at the ceremony. “I’m a little disappointed that there’re not enough young people,” he said.

Dr Balakrishnan needn’t have felt too disheartened. At that precise moment, dozens of children thronged the old Parliament Chamber just upstairs. They were not alone; youths and adults crowded the upper decks. They were present for Sayang Singapore, the first event of the Festival. Sayang Singapore, so say the storytellers, is a birthday present to Singapore, since ‘sayang’ is Malay for ‘love’, and since Singapore just celebrated its National Day a few weeks earlier.

Sayang Singapore was inspired by “the idea that commitment matters on every level - to people, societies, nations, the world, the earth,” explains Mrs Rosemarie Somaiah, 51, of the Asian Storytelling Network. The program was full of stories either adapted from Singapore fiction, or had resonance with Singapore, and often both.

Jessie Goh launched the storytelling medley with the Singaporean folk tale ‘Si Lanung Gelap’. The interactivity of the genre was manifest when she made the people in the audience echo the pirate king’s name- ‘Si Lanung Gelap’- whenever she said it herself, which they did with vim and brio.

It certainly helped that all the storytelling was aided by live music. For instance, Mabel Lee’s performance of Catherine Lim’s ‘Durian’ story was given a potent multimedia twist when a buzzing fly in the narrative was accompanied by trills from the guitar.

The stories were accompanied by a trio of able musicians- pianist Edward Tan, 21, guitarist Jeff Low, 21, and oboe player Justin Chew, 23. Their music composer, Wong Kah Chun, 21, currently a composition major at the local Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, says, “Sayang Singapore is a most memorable experience for me.”

Kah Chun is conscious of the similarities he has with the storytellers. “Storytelling is an interactive craft in which you portray your true self and you engage the audience directly”, he says. “This is somewhat similar to a concert performance, in which the musician injects his character into the music he or she is playing.”

“Storytelling is not just for writers or for librarians. Storytelling is for everybody,” said Mr Ramachandran, and he is proven right by the local network of storytellers. What is thought of as an activity for children alone is actually performed for adult audiences every last Friday of the month (http://www.storytellingsingapore.com/events.htm) at the DramaPlus Arts studio at Little India. More details are available at the Society for Reading and Literacy ( http://www.srl.org.sg/www/index.shtml).

“There’s usually a nice mix of teachers and librarians,” says storyteller and ‘word artist’ Denise Bertrand, who was present in the audience that evening. The storytellers welcome any interested parties.

After all, as Rosemarie asserts, “all humans needs good stories in our journeys through life. They are unobtrusive, they serve you well when you need them and they travel light!”

14 Aug

Here and Elsewhere- an evening with John Mateer

By Ng Kiat Han

On the evening of August 14, the spotlight was cast on award-winning Australian poet John Mateer during a poetry-sahring session at independent bookstore BooksActually. “I’m very happy to be here!” he declares. He is no stranger to Singapore, having first read his work here at the WordFeast Poetry Festival in 2004. He did readings of his poems, most of which had strong indication of his love for travel. This may have something to do with the cosmopolitan nature of his childhood, which was spent in South Africa and Canada. He is based in Melbourne today. “To me no place is foreign”, he says. “They are simply places I’m not familiar with. It does have to do with my childhood in South Africa and Canada- one of my fondest childhood memories was of visiting Europe with my parents on our way to live in Canada. Every place seemed to me a potential home.” “But there is also an intellectual component to this in that every place has a different history, and through the act of travelling one discovers how the dynamics of history shape a place, people and a self.” And this vision of the world certainly helps craft his poetic tenor. “To write about places, foreign or otherwise, is to attempt to expand one’s articulacy, to make one’s language deeper, more fluent and more useful. It allows one to know the limits of one’s own world and the wonder of other people’s worlds. And there is a real pleasure to be had in that,” he affirms. One of the poems he read was “Lion Dance at a Political Demonstration” from his volume Loanwords, which features cross-cultural nuances and sensibilities, this time, with Singapore. Cultural Relations Manager Charmaine Toh, 29, of the Australian High Commission confirms that we can expect more Australian wordsmiths in the future. “The Australian High Commission is always on the lookout to bring to Singapore high quality Australian writers. Unfortunately, Australian literature is not very well-known in Singapore and we hope to change that,” she says. National Arts Council Deputy CEO Khor Kok Wah, 51, who was in the audience, also appreciates the work of the journeyman poet. “The session inspired an interest in Indonesia, and in seeing cultures with fresh eyes. After listening to John and others, I feel that if I could write about home and travels in a way that readers would find meaningful and interesting, I might try,” says Mr Khor, who is also head of the NAC’s Literary Arts Division. BooksActually expects to stock John Mateer’s books in the near future. interested customers may place orders with the bookstore through email booksellers@booksactually.com, or they may choose to pop by the store and leave their contact details.”

01 Dec

Singapore Writers Festival

The Singapore Writers Festival (SWF), the nation’s major literary festival, opened on 1 December, marking a milestone in the development of the festival through a first-time collaboration between the National Arts Council and the Arts House.

This year’s theme, Crossings, celebrates the intersecting of disciplines, cultures, traditions, language, time and space in the literary arts. From music to film, performances and poetry, there were abundant opportunities for writers to hear, meet and be inspired by over 50 writers and 30 literary industry experts.

Commenting on the theme of the SWF, Philip Jeyaretnam, a member of the SWF Steering Committee, feels that these are “perilous crossings”. From known to the unknown; East to west and back again; English to Chinese to Malay to Tamil, and then full circle; it takes hardy adventures to navigate such uncharted terrain. He advises those to are unprepared to “close [their] books and stay at home”. For those “made of sterner stuff”, he promises engaging and scintillating conversation in the nine days of the Festival.

Dr Lee Boon Yang, speaking at the Singapore Writers Festival 2007 opening ceremony, strongly supported such developments in the literary arts scene. “The love of literature is an important hallmark of a gracious and cultivated society through the ages. Singapore is no different. We see the literary arts as a ccritical component of the nation’s cultural development,” he says.

Indeed, the SWF aims to be a platform for Singapore writers to showcase their works and to promote literary endeavours by organising net-working events and launches, where new and emerging writers will be presented alongside notable writers from all over the world.

Some of the authors taking part in the Festival include acclaimed Chinese writer Jung Chang; one of Singapore’s pioneer writers Goh Poh Seng; and stellar graphic novel talents such as Gail Simone and Kurt Busike. The highlight of the SWF was a professional symposium featuring local and international industry experts who shared their thoughts with audience on the finer points of publishing one’s work.

04 Dec

Why Arthur Yap deserves ‘Another Look’

by Ng Kiat Han

The evening of December 4 saw a moving tribute to the late Professor Arthur Yap. “Another Look: Remembering Arthur Yap 1943-2006” was a session where his friends, fellow writers and colleagues gathered to share stories written, or inspired, by him. The Living Room on the second level of the Arts House was packed with speakers as well as many of Yap’s friends, family, even fans. One of the perennial favourites from the Arthur Yap canon, “2 mothers in a hdb playground,” was read by Professor Leong Liew Geok. She was very animated in her delivery, and all the nuances in the poem’s patois were marvelously captured. She knows, after all, that it is a well-known “Singaporean poem written in Singlish,” and her reading certainly did it justice. Foo Chen Loong mirrored the poem with his reading of his (respectful, he hopes) parody, “2 mothers over a wall in queen astrid park,” which he wrote in his first year at the National University of Singapore, having been affected and inspired enough by Yap’s own “2 mothers” poem. It was evident that the professor was well-loved. Professor Leong prefaced her recital with the line “here’s to you Arthur- may you be truly well and truly happy”. For Arthur Yap was more than a professor or colleague to those present. Professor Lee Tzu Pheng said that he was very kind and magnanimous. “That was Arthur,” she said. “Generous, and giving of himself without fuss or fanfare”. Professor Lee also added that “to read Arthur was to be taken to the very playground of language”. Yap’s poetic expertise was certainly what earned him the respect and admiration of many. Professor Koh Tai Ann was very impressed when she saw the linguistic breadth of Yap’s poetic oeuvre because “you can see the very skillful way he has in mixing Standard English with Singapore English,” she says. Dr Tan Ying Ying, 31, Assistant Professor of Linguistics at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Nanyang Technological University, who was in the audience, also confirmed that her syllabus includes Yap’s “2 mothers” poem. “In linguistics”, she said, “I personally use Arthur Yap’s ‘two mothers in the hdb playground’ as material for my lectures on language planning and policy in Singapore”. Such was Professor Yap’s contribution to the national poetic idiom. His other talents were not forgotten, and it is appropriate that the retrospective was held in the exhibition hall The Living Room where Yap’s paintings were on display. These paintings were reminders that Professor Yap was a synaesthete who practiced different forms of artistic expression which often complemented each other. In her opening address, his sister Jenny Yap spoke of her brother’s use of painting as an extension of his poetry. “What he could not express in words he expressed in painting,” she said. Singapore School of the Arts teacher Yeo Wei Wei, 34, who is also its Head of English and Theory of Knowledge, agrees. ”The paintings are important because they show us another side to him,” she said. “There are overlaps of course in the vision of the poet and the painter- being the one and same person- but as Arthur Yap said himself, he would not have painted if he had been able to say the things he wanted to say visually through the word”. It is abundantly clear that Yap’s legacy will live on. His poetry is being studied by “O” level literature students today. In addition, Dr Yeo adds that “his poems will feature in the [School of the Arts’s] syllabus”. It is fitting that products from the fertile mind of arguably the nation’s finest poet continue to reverberate through the national literary consciousness.

04 Dec

First-Time Writers And Illustrators Publishing Initiative (FTWIPI) 2007

Eight children’s books developed from the second edition of the FTWIPI were launched on 4 December 2007. Among the selected works are: What Sallamah Didn’t Know, based on the life-story of an adopted girl; A Glowing Tale, poignant war-time narratives; and The Frog Who Can’t Jump, depicting the struggles of a frog who could not jump. The writing process was not without incident—a writer was “heavily pregnant” while another was caught in the throes of marriage preparations amidst submission deadlines. Nevertheless, it was an enriching and enjoyable journey for the first-time writers, many of whom had long cherished dreams of being authors. Emily Lim, author of Prince Bear And Pauper Bear, says that writing was “what she had always wanted to do” but never had to opportunity to do so until she took part in the Initiative. Inspired by her Christian faith and struggle with a voice disorder, her story is a heart-warming tale of love and friendship triumphing over adversity. To date, 22 books have been published under FTWIPI, not including nine comic and graphic novel stories that are now being published by Chuang Yi Publishing through MUGEN, a six-part comic anothology series. The third edition of the FTWIPI was also opened on the same day. For the first time, an official publisher, SNP International Publishing has been appointed to publish all the selected works. SNP Coorporation Senior Vice President, Ms Shirley Hew comments on the organisation’s role as the official publisher for the third Initiative: “We come from a long line of evocative storytellers within our migrant population. It’s time we shared our own Singapore viewpoints with the rest of the world. My publishing house and I are hoping to bring all the works to the attention of the international publishing world.”

The First-Time Writers And Illustrators Publishing Initiative is an initiative by the Media Development Authority (MDA) and the National Book Development Council of Singapore (NBDCS) to nurture talents in the publishing industry and assisted the publication of new works by unpublished local writers and illustrators. It is open to all Singaporeans or Permanent Residents. Applications will be assessed on originality and quality, potential for intellectual property rights optimisation and the applicant's ability and commitment to deliver the project. Applications for the Initiative should reach NBDCS by 8 March 2008. More details are given on the NBDCS website at (http://www.bookcouncil.sg).

The Elephant And The Tree Goes Places

As the first title from the First Time Writers and Publishers Initiative and arguably the only Singaporean children’s title to have garnered international interest, The Elephant and the Tree continues to create news in the media - an unusual occurence for a book. The title is now brokered by Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency - the same agency behind The Joy Luck Club and Maxine Hong Kingston’s titles. The world English language rights has been sold to independent publisher Running Press, onw of the US’s largest independent publishers, whose latest best-seller include the title Skinny Bitch. Its success is particularly sweet for its 32-year old author, Lee Jin Pyn, whom had “never stopped marketing the book.” Using the stream of press coverage following the launch of her book and her website as a springboard, she introduced her book to international players. With advice from “kind industry players such as Monsoon Books”, she had painstakingly researched the channels to approach. When asked why she thought the book was so popular, Jin Pyn replied: “I can’t speak for those who like the title, but most positive reviews centre on the deceptively simple illustrations and story. To me, simplicity always touches people. It is the very essence of childhood that kids know of, and which adults still find in the child in them. But I also believe that it is because of my altruistic intentions and motives for the title that has made it such a success. The book was born for a purpose, and that purpose was not me. You can only get support for such motivations.” The brand new edition of the Elephant and the Tree will be released in 2009, in line with Earth Day celebrations. The original edition is still available, but in limited numbers. The website (http://www.elephantandtree.com) is also undergoing a re-vamp, and the new website will allow children and adults to put in their views too. It will also feature a new segment where the elephant visits a new destination around the world every month. For now, updates can be found on http://www.elephantandtree.blogspot.com

SMS Literature

For the first time, Japan’s fiction bestseller list is dominated by books published, read and, in several cases, written on mobile telephones, most of them by young women in their 20s. The rise of the “mobile novel” has prompted an anxious debate about the nature of literature and the future of reading in Japan.

The 2007 bestseller list, published by Japan’s biggest book distributor, Tohan, revealed that five of the year’s most successful novels, including the top three, were first written for downloading on mobile phones before being republished in book form. The number one seller, Love Sky, sold two million copies in the last year, has recently been released as a hit film, and has made a star of its author, a woman in her early 20s known only as Mika.

A sequel, Your Sky, came in at number three, and second place went to Red String by Mei, which sold one million copies. All are written in short, simple sentences using relatively few characters, featuring melodramatic plots heavy on violence, sex and tear-jerking sentiment. Love Sky, for example, tells the story of a teenage girl who is bullied, gang-raped, becomes pregnant and suffers a miscarriage.

“The fact that young readers are being exposed to immature expressions and stunted vocabulary will accelerate illiteracy and damage their ability to express themselves,” one literary critic wrote. But others believe that the new genre is doing literature a service by promoting reading among young people who would otherwise have little interest in books.

The new dominance of mobile novels - keitai shosetsu in Japanese - is all the more remarkable for the speed with which it has come about. They did not exist in 2002, but the following year online sales were worth 1.8 billion yen (£8 million). By 2006, the figure has risen to 9.4 billion yen (£42 million). They owe their success to the popularity of the mobile phone among young Japanese, who were taking photographs, surfing the internet and sending emails on their mobile phones long before their peers in the West.

The principal characters of the stories tend to be young city dwellers. Tragedies, in the form of bullying, rape, murder and infection by HIV, strike them with terrible regularity. “The typical storylines of keitai shosetsu are corny,” says the sociologist Kensuke Suzuki. “It is a world of right and wrong, and is quite un-literary.”

This, of course, is their appeal. “High school students experience mobile phone novels as real life,” writes the high-brow literary journal, Bungakukai, which features keitai shosetsu in its latest issue. “For these readers, they are a substitute for pop music and comics.”