Singapore poetry to quote for all occasions, from proposals to your first BTO
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Poetry is a good source when you are at a loss for words, and award-winning Singapore poets can offer the best stanzas.
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SINGAPORE – When ordinary language fails, poetry rises to the occasion.
Singaporeans are not an expressive people. Who has not been at a loss for words – on a birthday or at a funeral, consoling a friend or making a speech – when an apt phrase matters most?
In these moments, familiar lines of poetry from bygone days in literature class can be freeing for the tongue-tied. But how many times can one repeat the same lines for a loved one fighting an illness – “Rage, rage against the dying of the light” by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas – without sounding trite?
And which poets can speak for peculiarly Singaporean milestones, such as a couple’s first HDB flat? On these occasions, a British or American poet is as likely to have the right words as Stratford-upon-Avon is to have a reliable roster of Singapore food.
Thankfully, Singapore has a thriving poetry scene and its fair share of highly quotable, award-winning poets, whose verse can be brief and portable, as befitting a fast-paced society.
Whether you are looking for a clever line peppered with local humour or a heartfelt verse, here are 15 stanzas of Singapore poetry to quote for all of life’s occasions.
For your marriage proposal
“is there an issue of sincerity
if over coffee, talk turns by and by
towards the prospect of a hdb?
would it be disrespectful if i,
while at a hawker stall, drop to a knee,
and place a tissue packet on your thigh?”
– Joshua Ip, from Chope
Forget Shakespeare. Joshua Ip’s sonnet is condensed to 14 lines of pragmatism that compares the Singaporean courtship ritual to reserving a seat at a crowded hawker centre.
Writer Joshua Ip.
PHOTO: NAC
This classic, cheeky poem comes from the Young Artist Award recipient’s Sonnets From The Singlish: Upsize Edition (2015), which contains 88 sonnets on “love, language and the pursuit of laughter”.
Make the ring the main course, and this poem the icing on the cake, for a foodie fiance or fiancee.
For a couple’s first BTO
“I want a bedroom so capacious I can park a Jaguar in it.
Two Jaguars. I want it large enough to be a local oddity, a tourist attraction, the subject of awe and envy, a heritage site.
So huge, developers will knock on my heavy door, asking to turn my land into condos for profit, and I will gleefully refuse.”
– Alvin Pang, from Upgrading
The excitement of successfully bidding for one’s first Built-To-Order (BTO) flat is surely an occasion for poetry. For the Singaporean who complains about how BTOs are getting smaller, this tongue-in-cheek poem from City Of Rain (2003) is perfect to recite while rolling the pineapple in a new home.
Singapore poet Alvin Pang in a 2012 photo.
PHOTO: ST FILE
With the Housing Board offering new open-concept flats in October
The author’s poems have been translated into more than 20 languages. Check out Pang’s classic book of eminently quotable mini prose poems, What Gives Us Our Names, which has been released in a new edition by Rosetta Cultures.
For describing heartbreak
“But you and I,
love, have slid glacially to the end
of our course. Now, the wide-open
estuary urges us apart, with promises
of deeper blues. The current unclasps us:
let this touch be our last. Unfold
the wet clay. Bury the remnants.
Let water slick the wound shut.”
– Amanda Chong, from Burial Rites
For those who love lawyer, playwright and poet Amanda Chong’s cutting lines on stage in the show Psychob***h
Described as a “poet’s directory of heartbreak”, lawyer, playwright and poet Amanda Chong is the poet for the lovelorn.
PHOTO: ST FILE
Everyone craves a good emotional release from a heartbreak ballad track, and poetry can hit as hard. Why stop at telling your bestie that you and your “soulmate” have broken up? Tell them that the two of you “have slid glacially to the end of our course”.
For welcoming a newborn
“This is all my living knows best:
Each night, your face
a folded flower in sleep
has a strength I gather,
to forsake my day’s confusions;
and the night withholds
its heaviness, as the sun
its height, until the morning.”
– Lee Tzu Pheng, from To My Niece
Any parent knows the indescribable joy of watching their sleeping child. Cultural Medallion recipient Lee Tzu Pheng, in simple language, puts this joy into words. The poem comes from a 1976 anthology of Malaysia and Singapore writing titled The Second Tongue.
Poet Anne Lee Tzu Pheng.
PHOTO: BENEDICT LAU
The rest of the short poem is full of quotable lines that also speak of the speaker’s love for her niece: “Child, not mine, and yet still mine, / my wealth and my poverty.” An aunt’s love can be so selfless too.
For moments of grief
“But in these narrow lanes of loss
My ritual hand is all that bears
Remembrance of his blood and bone
And prays a pale and alien cross
For my deficiency of tears
To reconcile the blinded stone”
– Cecile Parrish, from Bidadari
Grief is difficult to bear. Melaka-born poet Cecile Parrish’s poem about a child’s death acknowledges this numbness through the speaker’s “deficiency of tears”.
The poem comes from Parrish’s posthumously published collection Poems (1966) and is a small but mighty sonnet that can, for its articulation of how grief is a complex animal, comfort the bereaved.
For that nostalgic class reunion
“When I awoke I was twenty, being asked
If I had a happy childhood. Yes, the one
We all have: filled to the brim
With the love of absent things.”
– Alfian Sa’at, from Autobiography
“Like most of us, I can’t remember how / I was separated from my first love,” begins this poem with a speaker who cannot quite remember the details of his childhood. Despite this hazy memory, the poem captures the quiet warmth of reminiscing about the good old days. It is a perfect poem to bring to a class reunion.
Poet Alfian Sa’at’s sophomore collection, A History Of Amnesia (2001), was described by The Straits Times as “one of the most powerful collections by a Singaporean” upon its publication.
ST PHOTO: RACHEL NG
This poem comes from Alfian Sa’at’s sophomore collection, A History Of Amnesia (2001), which was described by The Straits Times as “one of the most powerful collections by a Singaporean” upon its publication. Alfian might be more prolific in his dramatic output today, but his three books of poetry are classics to re-read.
For a fresh graduate’s first job
“sir: i refer to my interview & your salary offer:
you said i would be given a commensurate salary:
commensurate with what? the depth of the filing
cabinet or the old bag sitting 3 desks & one right-
hand corner away?”
– Arthur Yap, from Letter From A Youth To His Prospective Employee
The phrase “quiet quitting”
The late Arthur Yap, who was awarded the Cultural Medallion for Literature in 1983, is one of Singapore’s most beloved poets.
PHOTO: ST FILE
The late Arthur Yap, who was awarded the Cultural Medallion for Literature in 1983, is one of Singapore’s most beloved poets. His wry humour, linguistic acuity and grasp of vernacular speech in poetry makes The Collected Poems Of Arthur Yap (2013) an essential read in Singapore poetry.
For those about to start a new life elsewhere
“Quit the country soon as you can
before you’re set on a career path or marrying
the home ownership scheme.
Pay no heed to the village elders.
They are secretly ashamed that they did not leave.
Quit the country but do not
shake the dust off your feet against it.
Leave instead with a secret smile
for all that leaving has to teach you.”
– Jee Leong Koh, from To A Young Poet
Every Singaporean knows someone who talks about wanting to leave the country – for an education, a work opportunity, life experience or simply for good. These lines are dispensed to a young poet – but the titular poet could be anyone who craves a life of creativity and expression.
Jee Leong Koh, who left Singapore more than two decades ago
Poet Jee Leong Koh, who left Singapore more than two decades ago and founded a literary non-profit Singapore Unbound in New York.
PHOTO: JEE LEONG KOH
For rekindling a lost friendship
“It happens that friends drop out of your life:
each year a face, a voice, lost, quietly gone
into a far country, each finding a way to survive.
You wonder about the few, whether they are alive,
the ones who matter, the maimed, the forlorn.
It happens that the angels slip unnoticed out of your life.”
– Boey Kim Cheng, from Disappeared
Friends drift apart – that is a fact of life. If you want to rekindle a friendship, words from this poem can help break the ice.
Even if a friendship cannot be rekindled, out of choice or circumstance, it can be heartwarming to know that you are an angel in someone else’s life.
Like this poem from After The Fire (2006), Singaporean-Australian poet Boey Kim Cheng’s work often deals with the people and places he left behind after moving abroad.
Singapore-born Australian poet Boey Kim Cheng at the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards.
PHOTO: WEE WAH FONG
His 2023 win at the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards
For the middle-aged
“mid-life you begin to appreciate
the necessity of surrender
they will haunt you these dreams
return in the sudden flash of longing
the hand held, the lips, the eyes
the waves on another shore limply dying
on enduring sand
when you have muted the colours
washed out the sharp lines
mixed the white to dampen the contours
your limp hands will sign this picture
call it simply, life”
– Chandran Nair, from The Limp Mind Closes
Mid-life is when many face turmoil about their life decisions, past and future, but the poet here makes the point that mid-life is “simply, life”. For loved ones between the ages of 40 to 60, these words can soothe the anxious.
Pioneer poet and publisher Chandran Nair, who died in 2023
Pioneer poet and publisher Chandran Nair, who died in 2023, is best known for the book Reaching For Stones (2009).
PHOTO: CHANDRAN NAIR
For the lonely hours
“Homes reassure each other
that they are homes.
Some people do not need homes. For them, any room or floor
will do. They live in travel,
their hearts are rivers.”
– Cyril Wong, from People Are Looking For Homes
No two persons’ idea of a home is the same, and this poem pays homage to the different ways people find their home. “They live in travel, their hearts are rivers,” is exactly the kind of phrase you want to tattoo on your heart and skin.
Author and poet Cyril Wong.
PHOTO: STEPHEN BLACK
It is hard to pick one single quote from the prolific oeuvre of Cyril Wong, who released his 16th book of poems Beachlight
For articulating pain
“I wish pain were a thing like a tooth- ache, sharpened
Into one point, not an area growing amorphous”
– Wong May, from The Man Who Dies
Pain is one of the hardest things to pin down in language, which is why doctors devise a tool known as the pain scale to measure it. But medical language can go only so far. The playful and precise poetic language here articulates what pain can feel like.
Poet-artist Wong May.
PHOTO: PAUL NAPO
Wong May, a Singapore-raised poet who won the prestigious US$165,000 (S$223,000) Windham-Campbell Prize reissued by Ethos Books in 2023
For a declaration of love
“My lips are not cement and they cannot seal these wounds
but I am here, palm held open and I
love you.”
– Pooja Nansi, from Here Is A Flower That Needs No Water
“You with the cracks running through you, / I know you think you will never be whole enough / to fill the leaky holes of someone else’s heart,” begins this poem that addresses the insecure. But the poem ends on a powerful note, direct as it is dramatic, that can affirm and empower.
Pooja Nansi, the longest-serving director of the Singapore Writers Festival the 2023 ST Life Power List
PHOTO: LIANHE ZAOBAO
For new years and beginnings
“May we take with us such singular sounds
–storm on the skylight, serrated squall,
and enough thunder to fill the year–that
we may dare on each intermediate day to
live cumulous, burn bold belligerent grey.”
– Theophilus Kwek, from For The New Year
New year, new me – said no original person on his Instagram caption. With susurrations and alliterations that are music to the ears, the poet awakens the senses to the possibility of newness in the flip of a calendar year.
Theophilus Kwek, who was the first Singaporean to win the Swedish literary prize for East Asian poets known as the Cikada Prize named in Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Asia List for 2024
Poet Theophilus Kwek is the first Singaporean to win the Cikada Prize, an award conferred by the Swedish Institute to an East Asian poet whose work “defends the inviolability of life”.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF THEOPHILUS KWEK
For praying
“I pray for faith, to reach
Reconciliation to the reality
That sometimes, we must meander
Through the curves of a question
Mark before reaching full-stop finality”
– Aaron Maniam, from Five Forms Of Modern Prayer
The prayer is not just for the religious or spiritual. Words of affirmation muttered during the yawn of mornings can be an anchor for the long day ahead and this poem offers five such “modern prayers”.
Poet Aaron Maniam.
PHOTO: ST FILE
Aaron Maniam’s debut collection Morning At Memory’s Border (2005) was shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize. This poem is taken from Second Persons (2018), his second collection.
Many of the books mentioned in this article can be purchased from major bookstores and their respective publishers or borrowed from the National Library Board.
