Interviewing Loh Guan Liang

Interviewing Loh Guan Liang

 Singapore, 26thAugust 2018

Loh Guan Liang is the author of two poetry collections: Bitter Punch (2016) and Transparent Strangers (2012). Bitter Punch was shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize in 2018. He also co-translated Art Studio (2014), a Chinese novel by Yeng Pway Ngon. Guan Liang updates at http://lohguanliang.weebly.com

JF: How is poetry taught in Singapore? 

There is a curriculum in schools and a certain syllabus for literature. The exposure to poetry mainly happens in middle school, when students are about 12-13 years old. We automatically want the students to be able to appreciate poetry, but sometimes it gets a bit too technical. They make you look for symbols and similes. It’s difficult for students to tell what they like in a poem, because they may not be strong in English, which becomes a problem. 

JF: In my readings of Singapore poets, most references and allusions seemed to come from English literature. 

For a very long time we were taught standard Western poets. In recent years, there is more acceptance of local poetry. It depends on each school but as a nation we are trying to get more people to be exposed to it. For a very long time there was Yeats (“What’s love”), Shakespeare…

JF: In an interview, you mention that your Anglophone references are easily recognizable, like Dickens or Larkin. What would your other references be?

I like Raymond Palmer and Jonathan Coe. I enjoy Alain de Botton a lot. I think that my first serious exposure to Western poetry was through [Philip] Larkin - I studied him at school. Larkin appealed to me because he writes about the common man, and that is something that resonates with me. Because far too often – you know, there’s all the Eliot. He seemed to write poetry to an elite and I felt that was alienating. For me, part of my – you could say – mission or part of my drive was to really write the kind of poetry that everyday people would understand, that would speak to them. Because, for far too long, poetry has been seen as dwelling in the realm of an elite. I write about really common things. I tend to avoid overly complex language in my poems. I try to make my poems simple, and one thing that I always seek is accessibility. I don’t write super long poems. In terms of clichés, I avoid describing love as the heart. It is about finding new ways to talk about things. 

JF: I was wondering if you also allude to Asian poets that I don’t know of, which is the reason why I am unable able to recognize them?

In my exposure to poetry, there were a lot of Western icons but none of them resonated. It was only in university that I discovered local poetry, and I liked it all. It seemed to be speaking to me. They were talking about things, places and people that you could see… 

JF: Who are your favourite poets from Singapore?

I like Felix Cheong. Who else? Hmmm… Alfian Sa'at. I started reading poets like these two. Their style was something that I admired and that I wanted to emulate. In the early stages of my writing, a lot of it was mimic. It took a while of experimenting before I settled in my own style and my own voice.

JF: In other interviews you have spoken about “words’ way”. Are you bilingual? 

I am.

JF: Have you never written in Chinese?

I have not, but I have translated Chinese to English.

JF: Your writing language is English?

Yes, English.

JF: Did you choose English as a language or does it have to do with Singaporean language policies?

As a matter of upbringing, I was raised in a Mandarin-speaking family, so English was something that came later because of school.

JF: At which age do you start learning English at school?

I think it is as early as pre-school, so 5/6 years old. 

JF: Are your parents fluent in English as well?

Not really.

JF: There seems to be this generation gap in Singaporean families.

There is. One thing that I appreciate about my parents’ Mandarin speaking background has to do with imagery. Part of my Mandarin speaking background is figured into my poems, and I like it. I like the way you set out those “two worlds”. For me, a lot of the experience of it is good concentrating. The brain is constantly flipping back and forth, it is crossing tongues… Sometimes, it gets a bit confusing, but other times it offers us rich space for creating new vocabulary.

JF: Yes. For example, in 追‘Pursuit’ you were able to do that with the description of a Chinese sign. Do you know the poem I am referring to? 

Is it the one with the Chinese characters?

JF: Yes. It is a good and absolutely marvellous description of the word but at the same time it is more than…

Yes, it is more than how the word looks. In that poem, the nature of the Chinese language lends itself well to this kind of transformation. 

JF: In Bitter Punch, you write about personal experiences. For example, there is a poem I really, really liked called “Paraplegic” in which the chair is the main character. 

“Paraplegic” was actually a collaboration with a local illustrator. It was a project that a literary magazine started for one of their issues, so they paired a poet with an artist or illustrator. So, I was paired up with – I can’t recall her name right now… She drew a whole series of chairs which then became the stimulus for me to write “Paraplegic”. 

JF: There seems to be a shift of style from your first book to the second. 

There was definitely a shift in the style in Bitter Punch. With Transparent Strangers, the poetic voice was more detached, I was looking at things from a distance. With Bitter Punch, I was dealing with a lot more intimate, personal content. At the same time, I think the whole experimentation runs through both books. It is just that with Bitter Punch, I guess,there is a bit more confidence in terms of the experimentation. The other thing I also noticed – I mean, after the book came out – is that Bitter Punch has a section that deals with very personal things that have happened in my life. That really is the break from the usual detached, distant urban observation. 

JF: You compare Bitter Punch to a game of boxing in an interview. Would you like to explain that?

I have an interest in martial arts and boxing. I also realized with Bitter Punchthat I grew with word playing. I unconsciously use a lot of word playing because I am in there as a child. And so sometimes, and increasingly, I see similarities between boxing and the kind of things that I write, the style in which I write. Hence, that comparison. 

JF: In Transparent Strangers the city of Singapore is a recurrent topic. 

In Transparent Strangers I was beginning to write about the experience of living in a city. Singapore is an urban place, it’s hard to find the countryside. In a sense, when you talk about Singapore to the rest of the world, you tend to compare it with Shanghai: both are fast paced, modern, urban cities. I was trying to find out what it was about Singapore that made us different from the rest of the world. Within the larger backdrop of it, with globalization, everywhere is starting to look the same. Tokyo, Shanghai, Singapore, Hong Kong… In Singapore it is through writing that we try to carve our space. 

JF: Your first book focuses a lot on artificial things: skyscrapers, shuttles, asteroids, but also on elections. There seems to be this slight, very discreet, critique of Singapore (which could also be perceived as an artificial construction). 

I definitely adopt a critique of what the city does in both books. A lot of my poems portray what an Eastern person is describing. When you adopt that reflective, contemplative position, you tend to see the good things and the bad things of the entire city. And I think that a lot of the pieces that I’ve written in both books stand for a response to something that is happening in the city. 

JF: Skyscrapers reflect light - they are also a mirror. The same happens in poems such as ‘A Tale of Two Cities,’ or when you mention burial grounds (things reflecting each other). Did you gather the poems around this topic or did the topic start to emerge at a certain point?

I think it was organic, because when I started off writing there was a loose collection of forms and I never thought of publishing them. That is when I started to notice that there were common beings, common subjects that run through the pieces…

JF: It is interesting, because you have a critical perspective of this vision of a contemporary Singapore you couldn’t possibly have lived in the old Singapore… Do your parents speak about it? 

My parents do. Sometimes, you detain this sense of nostalgia for what was a simpler, more natural and kinder Singapore. In recent years, the local government is highlighting these narratives, this sense of nostalgia, as a way of bringing people together. For example, nowadays neighbours generally don’t interact much with each other. They have busy lifestyles. So, the government wants to bring in again this idea of village living. In Singapore, we call it kampong. This word comes from a real village – Kampong. Kampong spirit is this common spirit, when in villages people live in community. And this is something that I write about. This, to me, is like an attempt to bring back that sense of nostalgia, to bring back those good old days when people looked after one another, where there was more trust, where people didn’t look at each other strangely…

JF: Do you think this is a necessity?

I think that for Singapore and many other global cities where we live there is always this drive for more – always bigger, better, newer. And in that sense, because we are moving at such a fast pace, and it is only certain to move even faster, certain people get left behind. Certain groups can’t catch up. For example, in Singapore preservation is quite foreign. We don’t really, really preserve. When we do, what we preserve is the outside facade of buildings, so you have Chinese shop-houses. But the inside of those, the heart of those buildings is no longer the same. It can be a law firm; it can be a spin studio…

JF: It’s true! And I have been wondering about this because for the Chinese it is very important to have good energy in certain buildings. How does this work with the new architecture in Singapore? 

In business buildings they try as far as possible to apply certain principles. In fact, the architecture of certain financial buildings reflects a certain superstition. For example, there is a building in Singapore which resembles the abacus, which was how Chinese suanpans used to calculate before the calculator came along. 

There are other things as well. For example, in front of the tax revenue building there is a water fountain, which for the Chinese is auspicious. All these little things get integrated into the design of the buildings. And that, to me, again, is one of those ambivalences of Singapore. On the one hand, we want to embrace the cosmopolitan, the almost Western-looking buildings, which you can see in Manhattan, New York, and so on. But at the same time there’s this shadow at the back of your mind where all these traditional, old superstitions and taboos come in… 

JF: I found the Flower Dome interesting because Singapore was the forest. You destroyed the forest, built a dome in its place and then decide to preserve the forest inside a building.

The Flower Dome is something out of science fiction. It’s very strange… It was built on reclaimed land. So, on the land itself, before there were native plants, there were domes which were decimated. Then they brought in non-native plants and flowers and pumped in so much technology to make it air conditioned. And then you show it to the world. What you have is like a manicured garden in a tropical island.

JF: It’s true! I did like the botanical garden very, very much. But it is the same contradiction, because I saw orchids and thought “Oh wow, they thrive here!” And then I realized that orchids were brought here very late, during the 20th century already. I was wondering what happened to the local flowers that were here? It is the same type of contradiction: you invented symbols, like the orchids, the Merlion, they seemed to be…

… representing this contradiction. 

JF: What other interests do you have?

Hmmm, I do baking now and then.

JF: What do you bake?

Nowadays, I am baking bun bread. I used to bake cakes and cookies.

JF: Do you know how to bake the mooncakes I have been seeing in Singapore?

No, no…

JF: They are beautiful. 

But there are two types of mooncakes: there is the cold one, the chilled one; and there is also the baked one. The chilled ones are usually more colorful, because there is no baking at all. 

JF: I have only tried the baked one… How do you manage to do the symbols?

There is a mould. They usually use a plastic for the mould. The more filling…  the better. But there are more things. Glutinous rice, which is kind of like a chewy gummy thing - that forms the outside skin – and then put in the filling, pack it, chill it and then it forms that shape with that general mould. The one that requires more skills is the baked one.

JF: Yes, I will try to find them online. I didn’t see the mould for sale… I suppose I could find them in Chinatown… 

Chinatown or even baking special teashops.  

JF: OK. What else do you like to bake? 

That is about it, actually. Recently I made… There is this thing called a Brazilian cheese bun “pão” or something…

JF: Pão de queijo?

That’s right! 

JF: Is it difficult to bake? It has to be soft in the middle.

The recipe that I have is just to put all the ingredients in a blender and you blend it. And then you just bake it until it pops up. 

JF: You must come to Portugal and check out our bread/cake recipes. 

When is a good time to visit Lisbon?

JF: For example, May. It’s a lovely month because it is not raining and the temperature is very pleasant.