Don’t call him a confessional poet: Cyril Wong on Beachlight, his 16th poetry book

SINGAPORE – Singaporean poet Cyril Wong might have been one of the first home-grown writers to depict sexuality so frankly on the page, but on the occasion of his 16th poetry collection, he laments: “I’m not just a confessional writer leh.”

It is a label which has stuck since his first collection, Squatting Quietly (2002) – which drew comparisons to poets such as Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton – up till more recent books such as The Lover’s Inventory (2015), which won the Singapore Literature Prize.

Wong is one of Singapore’s first openly gay poets, and ardent fans know him for his direct and ardent lines: “The men we loved, the men we had, the men we wanted. / They have done far worse than fail to miss us – / they have forgotten us.”

But having published books such as The Dictator’s Eyebrow (2013), told from the perspective of an unnamed dictator, he says: “If you actually do read my books – not that I expect anyone to – not all of them are about my body or my relationship to other people.”

Of the label “confessional”, the 46-year-old says: “It’s like an albatross around my neck.”

Beachlight, his latest with Seagull Books, is further proof that Wong writes beyond the personal. He takes on the perspectives of married passers-by, migrant workers, refugees, hawksbill turtles and even the waters of an unnamed Singapore beach.

The book takes the form of a single long poem divided into smaller 14-line poems which often read like small songs or quiet prayers.

Nature looms large in this collection as Wong pauses to ask: “How interested are trees / in matters of outrage and injustice?”

It was the claustrophobia of the pandemic which drove him to East Coast Park – where he grew up – and to write about the beach: “I reconnected with my childhood. I started to meditate more and become more in touch with my memories of being queer when I was young.”

“East Coast was the place to be before (the app) Grindr,” says Wong cheekily, referencing the area’s reputation as a cruising spot in the pre-Internet era.

“In the past, there was actual fear,” he says. He recounts on one occasion being at a cruising spot just hours before a police entrapment exercise, which he later read about in the news.

Sixteen books later, and at a time when

Singapore literature does not lack queer writing

, Wong wonders about his raison d’etre for publishing: “I literally don’t know why I publish any more.”

Many would raise an eyebrow when he calls himself an accidental poet. The trained singer, who used to perform here and abroad, says: “I see myself more as a performer than anything else.”

He adds: “Publishing feels very static. You publish a book, someone has an opinion about it, it’s over. It doesn’t feel like something that is ever-evolving.

“I come from a very Substation spirit, where it’s so much about performance art and the spontaneous moment.”

He was programme manager at The Substation, Singapore’s first independent contemporary arts centre, from 2002 to 2008 and currently sits on its board of directors.

That spirit, with the

closing of The Substation’s physical venue

, Wong says, is gone. The artistic spirit of experimentation and embracing failure, he feels, is also rarer as the arts become more institutionalised.

If given a chance, he would love for the poems in Beachlight to be set to music – although he confesses that he is probably too “lazy” to make that happen without the initiative of other artists.

Still, he is thankful for collaborators, recalling fondly working with sound designer and deejay Ramesh Krishnan at his reading during the closing event of

the Singapore Writers Festival in 2022

.

Wong has learnt one thing from publishing for more than two decades, and it is the reason his partner of 21 years urges him to keep publishing: “I can never predict who my readers are.”

Beachlight, released by Seagull Books in August, is available from Books Kinokuniya for $28.90.