The urban poetry anthology of Singapore is pissing me off. Besides a few sincere, heart felt poems that you know, you can identify with, most of these 'works' are slippery little fellas masquerading as literature and under the delusion that using irregular rhyme scheme and placing random Capital letters All over The Place means great thought and introspection. Bullshit. So what if this is a book that we are encouraged to read in order to take a glimpse into what "national identity" is all about, all this book does is prove to me that Singaporean poets are a bunch of uppity hypocrites who are under the guise that writing like their beloved colonial masters in describing the city like Wordsworth would describe his daffodils scream quality and whatnot. Seriously, get the idea of poetry representing the Urban landscape of Singapore is not a half baked idea, but rather some of the works I see on display are essentially pretentious, and I don't know, overtly ambitious perhaps? Keep it real Shakespeares, don't try to be something that you ain't. Especially when you're talking about your country.
The best entry by far, is the one which shows irreverence for the pigeon holing that the rest of the poets have underwent. Why is it that Singaporean poets are so adamant at becoming another Frost, trying to describe our concrete jungle in terms of nature and the like. Attempting to use nature to describe the human condition is a grandiose idea to say the least, but the fact that you're Singaporean dosen't help, especially when your so called perception of nature, is unabashdly limited.
And once again, it ain't cool to write verse and verse and verse,
and end off the poem
like this. Because
you think the colonial masters you
so want to follow
might
appreciate this shit.
Leadership Is What I Get From You (Bastards, Don't You Ever Kiss Ass)
Our camp commander - this was only so because he had shown great integrity, leadership skills and all roundedness to the instructors - was yelling at us : it was the first day of camp, his face was a big o and his mouth was a big o, o people, he shouted, you guys have not woken up yet, so all o you - do twenty pushups now, he made it seem so easy, and I wanted to yell at him : i can do that too, stand there and tell others to do fucking pushups , and the rest of us without these leadership qualities went down o onesir, o twosir, o threesir, like countless waves breaking upon the sandy shore.
-Johann Loh