SingLit poems on the MRT: 6 snippets to get you started

SINGAPORE – In the largest effort to promote Singapore Literature to date, more than 100 poem snippets have been stuck on trains and stations of the SMRT-operated North-South, East-West and Circle lines.

Here are six snippets that get you started on creating your very own Singapore poetry canon.

1. “I want to taste sharp the petai” by Edwin Thumboo

“I want to taste sharp the petai/Straight from the curling pod/To hold the village in my mouth.” – Renovation (1993)

Edwin Thumboo’s best-known work Ulysses By The Merlion is eschewed for one less laudatory of Singapore’s evolution. Celebration morphs into nostalgia, for a time when encounters with nature were more vivid and the senses more readily came alive. One can almost savour the stink of the South-east Asian bean, containing within it whole villages that in the 1990s had already been displaced by anonymous high-rise Housing Board estates.

2. “I mistake marmalade for kaya” by Hamid Roslan

“Sometimes it happens between aisles/in Waitrose. I mistake marmalade for/kaya, think of toast, mouth ‘nonsense’ –/but not alamak.” – Untitled (2019)

Another poem that accesses nostalgia through food, though this time spanning geographies rather than time. Hamid Roslan turns shopping in British supermarket Waitrose into a meditation on the diasporic experience: a gradual process of linguistic attrition, beginning with those most fundamental blocks – food and curse words.

This poem is from his parsetreeforestfire (2019), a “bilingual” book of poetry with Singlish on one side and English on the other. Its attention to language falls within a movement to reclaim colloquial speech, a conscious dismantling of colonial hierarchies.

3. “You have no other” by Simon Tay

“If you cannot learn to love/(yes love) this city/you have no other.” – Singapore Night Song (1985)

Simon Tay’s pragmatic call: You have only the city you are born in to call home, and must love it to be happy. Though his considered patriotism might be at odds in the globalised world today, where many have uprooted their lives to seek new fortunes in adopted homes, it speaks to an existential sense of belonging for many. 

4. “Drink dry all Europe’s wine” by Wang Mun Kiat

“from below the equator/i stretch a straw/to drink dry all Europe’s wine/ physics protests, preposterous! far-fetched!/lit says,/bottoms up!” – Drunk (2023)

Wang Mun Kiat is a Singaporean-Chinese poet, whose simple poems in his second collection Short Tongue (2023) belie deep reservoirs of irony, wit and social commentary. His declamation here is exactly the sort one makes when inebriated, but it also captures an artist’s lust for life. Translated from Chinese by poet Joshua Ip.

5. “A rainbow laid herself down” by Mohamed Latiff Mohamed

“A rainbow laid herself down/at the bottom of the pool/that is limpid and clear/fencing in the ocean/half of its breast/is caressed by the dusk/while the rest/are playthings/for angels at the edge of paradise.” – Pelangi (Rainbow, 1980)

Cultural Medallion recipient Mohamed Latiff Mohamed’s rainbow is a pliant bridge between the heavens and earth infused with a touch of divinity. A three-time winner of the Singapore Literature Prize, he is better known as a “poet of protest”, highly critical of groups in power and a champion for the poor. Translated by Alfian Sa’at.

6. “The back is bent like a rainbow’s arc” by K.T.M. Iqbal

“Weighed by life’s harsh experiences/The back is bent/Like a rainbow’s arc/Yet that spine tells a tale – /Of a life lived/with resilience and fortitude” – Grey Light (2016)

The same rainbow here evokes the hardscrabble life of a worker, with Tamil poet K.T.M. Iqbal’s simile as unusual as it is empowering. Iqbal, a Cultural Medallion recipient, is also a prolific essayist. Grey Light is translated by Sulosana Karthigasu.