Interviewing Yeng Pway Ngon

Interviewing Yeng Pway Ngon 

1st September 2018

Yeng Pway Ngon is a recipient of the 2003 Cultural Medallion for Literature. He has published 26 volumes of poetry, fiction, essays, plays and literary criticism in Chinese. In 2013, he taught novel- and short story-writing at Nanyang Technological University's Chinese Language Department, under the Chinese-Writing-Residency Project. In the same year, he received the South-east Asia Write Award (SEA Write Award). Pway Ngon won the National Book Development Council's Book Award for 1987-88, and was the winner of Singapore Literature Prize for 2004, 2008, 2012. His poetry and novels have been translated into English and Italian.

JF: When did you start writing?

I started writing very early, when I was 14. I wrote short-stories and poetry. In 1960, there were many bookshops selling books from Taiwan, I read a lot of short-stories and novels by Taiwanese authors. Later on, I also wrote essays and plays. 

JF: Do you write daily?

In the 1980’s I had a daily social commentary column and had to write every day. Occasionally I wrote poetry. After I stopped writing the column I started writing my first novel, A Man Like Me, for which I won an award. A novel takes a long time to write, it’s always difficult. 

JF: Have you ever worried about censorship?

No. I always thought, if I couldn’t publish in Singapore I would publish elsewhere, say, in Taiwan. Most of my novels were published there. Later on, as I have many readers, several of my books were published in Singapore as well. In Taiwan, they use the complex characters and not the simplified characters used in mainland China, which was why I preferred to publish in Taiwan.

JF: As a writer what is most important to you?

A free mind. Besides a free mind, you must also have the courage to express your thought. And you cannot worry about whether the book will sell or not. 

JF: I heard you were detained in 1977 for almost four months?

Oh yes, it is true. In an operation that roped in suspected communists, I was detained among a group of people. I had a close friend who was a communist, and the government suspected that he had roped me into the organization because of our friendship. I was cleared and released subsequently. 

JF: You mentioned some authors in Taiwan were an important influence to you in your writing?

Authors such as Ya Hsien and Yang Mu had a strong influence on me in my poetry. But I was influenced by quite a few Western writers in my novels. I read Saul Bellow and Italo Calvino in Chinese translations.  T.S Eliot and Rilke inspired me in writing poetry. 

I also read Saramago and the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk. 

JF: Are you concerned with form when you write a poem? With rhyme, where to cut a line?

All poems must have a form, a pattern and an internal rhythm. 

JF: How do you work out the rhythm and pattern in your mind?

I can feel it in the course of writing. 

JF: Nature comes across a lot in your poems, the imagery of leopards, flowers, trees and the sea.  

I would like to talk about a poem titled “In The Tree”. This poem was inspired by Calvino. In this poem, the tree is a metaphor, I like the solidity of trees, they convey a sense of time. 

The ocean is another aspect of nature that appears in some of my poems. Singapore has been expanding through land reclamation and where I lived as a child had disappeared. 

JF: Do you feel nostalgic for a past which will not return?

Yes. 

JF: Do you have something you hate in poetry? It might be a cliché or a figure of style?

I hate untruthfulness. Poetry should be inspired by real-life experience. If what you express in your poems is not your real feelings, then you are not being truthful.