Interviewing Angeline Yap

Interviewing Angeline Yap

Angeline Yap (b. 1959) is an award-winning writer whose poems have been in Singapore literary publications since her student days in the 1970’s. She has collaborated with writers and artists from Asia, Australia, the UK, and the USA. Her poems have been read or performed in Singapore, Australia, Edinburgh, Finland and elsewhere, over radio & television, during Arts Festivals, in libraries, museums, parks, & even a converted Australian jail!  Some poems have been translated, and others set to music for choir performances in Singapore and internationally. She works with young people through workshops and seminars, and was honoured for her contributions to Singapore’s Creative Arts Programme.   

JF: You started writing during your convent schooldays. How did you start? 

I wrote my first poem in class in Primary school, when I was eight or nine years old. 

Our English teacher, Jessie Pillay, set us an exercise, so I wrote a few lines.  The poem was about a little dog sitting outside a butcher’s shop which began to bark when it saw a lark fly over the butcher’s shop.  (Now, there are no larks in Singapore, and this was in the 1960’s and there were no butchers’ shops either, because we bought our meat at outdoor markets – and I knew that because my task each week was to pick fresh eggs at the market, while waiting for my mother to finish shopping.  But that was the kind of poetry I had access to, “lark” rhymed nicely with “bark”, and so that was what I wrote.)   

After I was encouraged to write another stanza to "keep the first stanza company”, and drew a little picture, my maiden effort was displayed on the classroom  board. That was how it began … yet that was not how it began.

Even earlier, I would spend my Saturday mornings in the children’s library at Stamford Road, reading every single one of Dr. Seuss’s books from beginning to end and back again. (I loved those mornings and the Library felt like a second home because my home too contained many books and rainy days were spent browsing through my father’s literature books.)  

JF: And how did it continue?

Jessie shared a book that completely captured my imagination – it was entitled “Creative Writing” and in it were pencil etchings and poems written by other children, so Jessie said, “You can too – why not try?” and I did.  Yet again when I was ten, another teacher, Sister Josephine Healey (who had previously taught Jessie) also said, “You can too – you must try!” and I did.  Later, Sister Josephine introduced me to Marie Bong, who had written “Creative Writing”, and through Marie Bong, I met Edwin Thumboo, Lee Tzu Pheng, Robert Yeo and Kirpal Singh.

JF: What is it like to be religious in Singapore?

I'm an Anglican – i.e. a Protestant but let me say that modern Singapore intentionally focused on creating and maintaining a society that is owned and shared by all her citizens, regardless of our differences in race, language or religion. It requires constant effort and commitment. I'm always grateful for the freedom of worship we enjoy.

 
JF: Religion still seems to play an important role in your poems. In poems such as ‘Communion’ or ‘I am the Cross’ God is someone who listens.  

Between ‘communion’ and ‘i am the cross’ there is a span of maybe 20 something years - between the late 1980s and I think 2002/03.  The ‘you’ in  ‘communion’ is first myself when I was writing, and then the reader, and I suppose you could say God listens to the reflection.  In ‘i am the cross’ I tried to show that Christ in His passion suffered for all, embraced all, He sees, embraces and offers Himself for both the victim and the attacker.  In that sense, His is a single unifying task - the Paschal lamb offered for all.

JF: Miriam Lo suggests you approach Christianity by way of zen budism. What would you say? 

I don’t practice Zen Buddhism, but Miriam Lo’s observation most likely alludes to the contemplative thread that runs through the two faiths.  

There are some similarities in approach / method / terminology but I think one very critical difference.
As I understand it, the objective in Buddhist meditation is to empty or clear the mind.  In contast, in Christian contemplation, the aim is to “centre” the mind and heart on God - to focus totally on God, to so totally fill the heart, mind and consciousness with nothing but God that every distraction is banished, to be totally present to God, and immersed in God - to "be still and know ... God”.

JF: I know the feeling you describe in I want to be still (my mind is a troupe of chattering monkeys). The crowd could be children. God seems to appease all those voices.

Yes. Yet when God makes His presence known, he speaks to the storm – ‘Be still!’ 

JF: However, in ‘Reflection during Communion’ you ask whether this ‘body must be taken and broken for god’. Was there a moment of doubt? 

I guess the answer is written in the poem ‘there is a crowd in my head’.

‘.... there is a crowd in my head, who take and take,
and leave me nothing for myself

 .... so I bring them to the Lord ...
and one by one, He takes them. 

... 

until there is nothing left
-- only Him, and me, and the quiet.’

JF: I like your poem ‘helplessness’ very much. There is a simplicity in it which I appreciate. You seem to claim that happiness is eloquent, but the way to describe it is simple. In ‘simple’ you explain how your pen tidies your writing. 
Thank you for your kind words.

JF: You portray happiness as something simple in a ‘Mound of Gold’. Happiness cannot be quantified. This simplicity seems to be lie within Singapore’s ideology.  
Yes, it does seem sometimes that it's easier to express happiness or join in a friend's joy than it is to find the appropriate words with which to empathize with grief or to soothe another's anger.
Between ‘helplessness’ and ‘simple’ is another span of maybe two decades - the first poem I wrote in my late teens, the second I wrote for Marie Bong, I think in my thirties. 
Around that time, I also wrote ‘A Mound of Gold’ during one Chinese New Year season as I stacked mandarin oranges in a bowl to make a mound of golden fruit. 

It is customary to have lots of mandarin oranges in the home, because the Cantonese words for gold and oranges sound almost identical. .... It's aspirational (as in ‘may you have plenty / wealth in the coming year.’)  As a Christian, I would have prayed a prayer that the family - and my home/country - would be rich in harmony, peace, unity, joy, love, etc. and also that my family would walk with God in the coming year. 

It's also a ‘count your blessings’ poem. When you use gratitude to brush up what seems insignificant (dust), God adds His blessing and you find that you hold a Mound of Gold in the palm of your hand.

JF: You also seem to be appreciative of the simplicity in daisies and simplicity in poetic forms. But they are not what one would consider to be light verse.

Again, thank you. 

I think you have a point there - in ‘Birthday Poem’ I write about preferring daisies to gerberas.  (I do appreciate gerberas, chrysanthemums, sunflowers and the like, but I love the simplicity of white-petalled daisies). As anyone who has written a haiku will testify, the simplest forms can also be the most challenging.   Simplicity has been an abiding preoccupation, hasn't it?   

JF: Is form important? Do you think of meter and rhyme?

I use poetic devices and forms of all kinds - assonance,  sibilance, alliteration and so on. I write really long pieces or really short ones, some are written in strict form - like the haiku - most are in in free verse.  Yet even the free verse is often more than speech set free to serve as poetry... I  think even there you will find the natural inherent music of the words.

JF: I do like your poem “Lesong,” how would you explain it? 

The ‘Lesong’ (Malay word) is a granite mortar for pounding spices.  The pestle is called the “anak lesong” ("anak" is "child" in Malay).  So there - in this image, you have a child nestling in the mother's embrace. Sometimes, in Malay or Peranakan cuisine, one needs to pound spices till they are very fine, switching the pestle from one hand to the other when the arm tires .... hence the poem says that the lesong teaches patience.

JF: Your poems have been sung by choirs in Singapore. How is it listening to a poem in the form of music? 

It's both sad and satisfying. Satisfying to hear how others interact with the piece.  Sad because the child has grown up and must live its own life. 

JF: Tse Hao Guang wrote about the difference between sound and sight in your poems. Is it disruptive?

I think you are referring to "Ting" or "closing my eyes to listen".  Sometimes it helps to close the eyes in order to marshal all one's effort to truly hear with the ears of the heart. 

JF: What other influences have been important to you? Miriam Lo mentions Dickinson... 

So, so many - in my growing years I read Thumboo and Tzu Pheng and everything written by Singapore writers that I could get my hands on.   I also read quite a bit of Shakespeare, and besides Marie Bong's "Creative Writing", two other very formative books were "Poetry of the English Speaking World" - a collection that spanned Beowulf to e.e. cummings - and James Reeves' "The Poet's World". Then later, there were Owen, Yeats and Frost.  I'm currently re-reading Psalm 23, and when i have the time, I like nothing better than settling down to read.  I'm currently reading - and re-reading - Jane Kenyon, John Piper and Lee Young Li. (Also, it may be difficult to believe, but a really good legal judgement has a different kind of poetry to it.)

JF: Is there anything you particularly like?

Simplicity? 

Also, in the early 2000s, I made friends with verbs, and that continues to be a very fulfilling relationship. 

I like lines that sing. 

And also metaphors aptly chosen, well employed.

I value craftsmanship.