Source : Straits Times – 8 Aug 2009
IN BETWEEN listening to the real estate agent’s spiel about the rainshower in the bathroom and studying the gleaming mahogany parquet flooring, Mr Toh Hsien Min started forming a poem in his head.
That visit to a condominium showflat resulted in Mr Toh, 34 – a leading member of the crop of English-language Singapore poets born after Independence – writing a poem for Insight.
He went down to The Peak@Balmeg showflat in Pasir Panjang with the sole purpose of doing research for the poem after spotting an advertisement for the condominium in the newspaper.
Showflat-viewing – a symbol of Singaporeans’ love affair with property – is the ‘classic Singaporean weekend activity’, declares Mr Toh as he explains his choice of subject matter.
‘There are people who spend all their weekends just going to showflat after showflat. It’s part of the fabric of our economy and society,’ he says drily.
When the poet and editor of Singapore’s premier literary journal QLRS uses words like ‘the economy’, he speaks as an insider who knows what he is talking about. He is a risk analyst for an international bank, and as conversant in the language of financial models as he is with Shakespearean sonnets.
‘It keeps life interesting. I need to exercise different parts of my brain,’ he says coolly – without any emphasis, elaboration or dramatic hand gestures – of his choice of both day job and vocation.
In person, Mr Toh is like his poetry: formal and controlled, at times glacially so, but with emotion and wit bubbling beneath the surface.
He needs to be prodded to reveal more about his interests outside of poetry, before he finally offers: ‘I don’t see how it would be relevant to your piece but I do a lot of wine tasting.’
He does not say so, but one wonders if this self-consciousness is due to the lingering sting from a review of his last collection of poetry Means To An End (2008).
In a review in QLRS, fellow poet Ng Yi-Sheng consigned Mr Toh’s work to the ‘reluctant yuppie’ school of poetry that he felt pervaded Singapore’s shelves.
This is, no doubt, in contrast to Mr Ng himself, who at 28 is a full-time writer.
Mr Toh’s track record as a serious poet and literary advocate speaks for itself.
He has three poetry collections to his name, including a maiden collection, Iambus (1994), which he published at the tender age of 19.
His work has also been published in international periodicals, such as the Atlanta Review and the London Review of Books. While a literature undergraduate at Oxford University, he was president of the university’s poetry society.
His love of verse stretches back into the mists of childhood, when ‘the earliest things I can remember writing were poems’.
‘When I was eight or nine, I had this great little book called Junior Poetry Workshop which showed you some simple poems and set simple exercises for you to do, and I loved it.’
This passion for poetry extends also to his belief that there should be debate and disagreement over it – at the risk of his own poems getting a bashing.
It was the dearth of literary criticism here that prompted him to start QLRS, an online literary journal, eight years ago. It now has 5,000 to 10,000 visitors a week, including readers from universities and libraries in the West.
Ultimately, he believes, Singapore literature can grow only if ‘others stand up and take a view of things, point out where we (writers) can improve’.
On Member of Parliament Irene Ng’s suggestion of publishing an anthology of poems about Singapore, he notes that there are already several such anthologies, such as No Other City, published by Ethos Books in 2000.
The best way of drawing society into a dialogue with its poets is to put more of Singapore literature on the school syllabus, he says.
‘I’m not sure forcing people to study it necessarily cultivates a love for it, but it would create awareness. It’s probably the best option we’ve got.’
SHOWFLAT ON PASIR PANJANG HILL
Toh Hsien Min
On sunlit Saturday afternoons
we see it starting up:
the white honeycomb
like so many scattered over the island.
Cars jam narrow lanes,
hand-gestured by sweaty men
playing runway controllers
to a landing in a hillside clearing
of hastily laid tarmac
chattering like crisp anticipation.
Entering the reception area
elicits a tanned and honeyed smile
and a brochure showing
views into the impossibly azure
reserved for an exclusive few
although no blazing sun
heats the still and humid air.
Maps proclaim an expressway
and uncluttered straightline roads
into the heart of town
or to prestigious institutions
and sparkling shopping malls
for those who eschew
the MRT station in the proximity.
The ones who do not believe
in the sagacity of a keen crowd
may see how all is given depth
by a beautiful scale model
whose swimsuited plastic figurines
recline on tiny deckchairs
beside the infinity pool
blending in with the water feature.
A swarm of flip-flops
point inwards from the patio
to the coolness of Italian marble
outlined by timber skirting,
while the air-conditioning
invades even the kitchen,
where the spice racks sit
beside an Australian cabernet.
In the rooms, queen-sized beds
do not swallow so much space
as to hide the parquet flooring
while the built-in wardrobes
are draped with satin dresses,
and the hotel-inspired bathroom
boasts a rainfall shower
and a deep designer sink.
No one will settle in this showflat
and sit out on the balcony,
yet its scrubbed ceramic tiles
witness a strange bonding,
families on the threshold
of attaining revivifying change:
the bewildered grandmothers
following their sons-in-law
and trying to hold on
to the grumpy children
while all the time each one
projecting the heft of happiness
upon emulsion paint
might not imagine their experience
repeating across the island
with the punching of calculators
and drone of floating rates
wherever apartments rise and fall,
but in this clamour
the capability for reinvention
and the aspiration of the tribe
are as clear as the view out to sea.
If this collective buzz seeks
to arrive at a destination
greater than any each may know,
and if the sense of ownership
lasts only as long as an unblocked
vista into the green crests
of Kent Ridge cannot be outbid
by a lofty en bloc offer,
we know that this coming together is
to build something real,
something more than high tensile steel
and concrete columns,
something we can hold
not in our hands but in our hearts:
perhaps a nation,
perhaps a community,
perhaps a home.
