Experience Singapore Literature Symposium

Saturday, 31 October 2009
9.30am – 2.00 pm,
The POD, level 16, National Library Building

Breakfast Club: Singapore Iconic Writers

*10.00am – 12.00pm,

The POD, level 16, National Library Building

In this session, come face to face with Singapore literary iconic writers who will share with you everything you’ve always wanted to know about the writing of some of Singapore’s bestselling novels!

‘Inspiration, Perspiration, Aspiration – The Writer’s Whole Shebang’ by Catherine Lim

As a writer, Catherine Lim is full of passion and will talk about the three components that form the thrust of her writing experience: exhilarating inspiration (that marvellous ‘Eureka’ moment), frustrating perspiration (that awful writer’s block) and driving aspiration (‘World, here I come!’).

Catherine Lim is the doyen of Singapore stories and has won national and regional book prizes for her literary contributions including Honorary Doctorate in Literature from Murdoch University and Southeast Asia Write Award. A full time writer in Singapore; she is also a political commentator and a guest lecturer on cruise ships.

‘My experience in the early spring of Singapore Writing’ by Stella Kon

The period of the 70′s – 80′s may be seen as an early springtime of literature in Singapore, as she emerged from the spartan austerity of immediate post independence.  A few dozen, if not a hundred, flowers were encouraged to bloom.  These were the first green shoots, which led to the rich flowering of the 90′s.

Stella Kon is best known for the monodrama, Emily of Emerald Hill.  She has written many plays, novels and short stories, and received National prizes for writing. She is the Chairperson of Musical Theatre Limited and has written several musicals for MTL. Stella lives in Singapore, and has six grandchildren in Australia and Britain.

‘The Teenage Textbook Experience’ by Adrian Tan

Adrian will discuss on writing fiction for young people, and his experiences in having his novels adapted for the big screen.

Adrian Tan is a lawyer and the author of best-selling novels The Teenage Textbook and The Teenage Workbook.  His books, about young people growing up in Singapore, have been adapted to the stage and the screen.

Adventures of a Private Literary Contractor by Colin Cheong

Terminally jaded, hopelessly flawed and motivated only by filthy lucre, Colin Cheong’s adventures in Singapore literature (and mercenary writing) will inspire anyone who’s trying to ‘make it’ in writing. Because if he can make it, so can you!

Colin Cheong is the author of award-winning titles that includes ‘The Stolen Child’ and ‘Tangerine’. His literary contributions have won him numerous awards including National Book Development Council of Singapore Highly Commended Award & Singapore Literature Prize. He has been a private literary contractor since 1980.

*Note: Inclusive of breakfast which starts at 9.30am.

Explore Singapore Literature
**12.30pm – 2.00pm,

The POD, level 16, National Library Building

Explore the depth, beauty and future of Singapore literature as we take you on a discussion with our distinguished panel of speakers; Assoc Professor Kirpal Singh, Poet Alvin Pang, Stephanie Yap from Straits Times and Matthew Lyon from The Flying Inkpot. Take a look at the indicators that speaks volume of our local literary health situation and understand the landscape from various angles: academic, writing, media and drama.

About the Speakers:

Kirpal Singh is an Associate Professor of English Literature and Creative Thinking at the Singapore Management University and has authored and edited over 16 books. He is also a poet, literary, cultural critic and was a founding member of the Centre for Research in New Literatures, Flinders University, Australia in 1977, the first Asian director for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in 1993 and 1994, and chairman of the Singapore Writers’ Festival in the 1990s. 

Alvin Pang is a poet, writer, editor, anthologist and cultural activist. A Fellow of the Iowa International Writing Program, his writing and curatorial efforts has been featured in major publications, productions and festivals around the world. He was named NAC Young Artist of the Year (2005), and has received the National Youth Award (Arts and Culture, 2007) and the JCCI Foundation Education Award (2008).

Matthew Lyon has acted, directed and written for the stage in Singapore and is one of the editors of The Flying Inkpot launched in 1996 to create an online platform for writing about the arts in Singapore.He now teaches Theatre Studies and Drama at Raffles Institution, and is in charge of Raffles Players, the drama society of the college section.

Stephanie Yap is a long-time book reviewer and arts columnist for the Straits Times. A former beat reporter for books, she has written extensively on the Singapore literary scene, including a 20-part series on groundbreaking works of Singapore literature. She is currently a sub-editor with the newspaper.

**Note: Inclusive of lunch which starts at 12.00pm.

What’s in store for ‘Past & Present’?

Supper Club
Saturday, 31 October 2009
12.00am – 6.30 am

Event begins at Possibility Room, level 5, National Library Building

Singapore Literature Overview

Start the journey with a self-reflection of Singapore literature – its past, present and possibly what the future beholds. Influenced by rapid changes of Singapore’s skyline, rewriting of Singapore history and the changing expectations of society, Associate Professor Kirpal Singh will reveal how Singapore literature is surprisingly colourful and dynamic!

Past & Present

Past & Present is an ensemble of three experiences that examines the factors influencing past writings and works through changing times, spaces and people.

• Concrete/Poetry
• Night Returns
• Performing Moments

Concrete/Poetry by Ng Yi-Sheng

Experience lyrical but factual walking tours of the area.  Highlights of the tour includes a look back to Kuo Pao Kun’s legacy, emerging trends in writing and arts in the post NAC-supported era, colonial writings at Jubilee Hall, generation of ’95. Intersperse with these visits and facts, participants will enjoy readings of past works in connection to the areas.

Ng Yi-Sheng is a full-time freelance writer of poetry, drama, non-fiction, fiction, songs, slam, journalism and criticism. He won the Singapore Literature Prize in 2008 and his non-fiction book SQ21: Singapore Queers in the 21^st Century was a local best-seller. His plays have been staged locally by TheatreWorks, Toy Factory Theatre, W!ld Rice and Musical Theatre Singapore, and abroad as far afield as Australia and the UK.

Night Returns by Kaylene Tan

Experience walking in the dead of night and be challenged by a series of task-based activities that will awaken your senses to the history and personal connections to the places visited.

Kaylene Tan is one half of the performance company, spell#7 (www.spell7.net). Over the years, she has created a range of experiential and immersive sound and performance as a writer, director and performer. Her interest in making audio experiences with spell#7 has created audio works for the Singapore Biennale (2008) and the Singapore Arts Festival (2009).

Performing Moments by Natalie Hennedige

Get involved in a session of instant devising and spontaneous creation with workshop facilitator Natalie Hennedige. A little like performing a travel journal of collective memories, Performing Moments will enable participants to collect, collage and capture their experience in a tangible, imaginative and enjoyable way.

Natalie Hennedige is the Artistic Director of Cake Theatrical Productions. In 2008, Natalie was awarded Best Director at The Straits Times Life! Theatre Awards for Nothing, which also won Production of the Year. Recently, she was invited to collaborate with leading Malaysian arts collective Five Arts Centre to write and direct Cuckoo Birds, as part of their 25^th year anniversary celebrations.

The Unknowns

The Unknowns bring together three local writers: Paul Pereira, Pugalenthii & Othman Wok to share their experiences and source of inspirations to their writings of the mysterious realms.

Paul Pereira has been engaged in experimental and surrealistic writing since childhood and has spent most of his life in dream. The VONTINUUM experience embraces randomness, chaos, abstraction and non-linearity in literature. This method encourages the mind of the reader to approach reading in a non-traditional way, heightening the experience, making the unknown, known and the unseen, seen.

Pugalenthii is a successful entrepreneur, author, editor, life coach and scriptwriter. He is one of Singapore’s most prolific horror writers, having created the successful best-selling horror series, Nightmares, which has over 30 titles. As the founder and publisher of VJ Times International, he published over 170 Singaporean writers and poets over a period of 20 years. Hear from Pugalenthii the research and writing process and how he got together his best-selling titles.

Othman Wok is Singapore’s former Cabinet Minister serving as the Minister for Social Affairs from 1963-1977. Prior to politics, he was a journalist for Utusan Melayu. During his days as a journalist, Othman Wok produced a series of short horror stories for Jawi magazines such as the Mastika and the Utusan Melayu. In this video clip, Othman Wok shares his thoughts in writing the horror genre.

Drama Across Languages

Singapore thrives as a “rojak” society, colourful and vibrant in its multiculturalism. Join director Alvin Tan from The Necessary Stage, Tamil Dramatist Vadi PVSS from the Ravindran Drama Group, Theatre Ekamatra’s President Zizi Azah and Drama Box Artiste Li Xie as they share the experiences and challenges of writing about and for their communities.

Alvin Tan is the founder and artistic director of The Necessary Stage (TNS). One of the leading proponents of devising theatre in Singapore, Alvin has directed more than 40 plays, which have been staged worldwide. Some of these landmark productions include Lanterns Never Go Out & Still Building amongst the few. He was conferred the Young Artist Award by the National Arts Council and is also strongly involved in civil society work, representing Singapore in numerous conferences and workshops around the world.

Vadi PVSS is the co-founder and currently an advisor of Ravindran Drama Group, a Tamil theatre group in Singapore. He is also the co-founder and co-artistic director of Miror Theatre, which stages Tamil theatre works. Vadi will share a brief historical perspective on the Tamil theatre scene and a reflection on what the future holds for minority theatre groups.

Zizi Azah, a renowned Artistic Director of Teater Ekamatra has written and directed theatre performances since her teenage years. Hear from Zizi the history of Malay contemporary theatre in Singapore, the change in artistic direction as well as the changes that Teater Ekamatra is undergoing in the attempt to discover and discuss the new Singaporean Malay Identity.

Li Xie is an associate artist of Drama Box and also a freelance theatre practitioner and mask-maker. She performs, writes, directs and has taught acting and movement in LASALLE-SIA College of the Arts and Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts. Her re-staging of the critically acclaimed one woman performance, The Vaginalogues, was voted the best play of the year in 2000 and was awarded the Young Artist Award by National Arts Council (Singapore) in 2005.

How to write a Memoir
Saturday, 28 November, 2.00 – 4.00 pm
Visitors’ Briefing Room, Level 1, National Library Building

What’s it about a 92-year-old Hakka woman that compelled her son to write her life story, especially her last two years of being enfeebled in body and emptied in brain? A victim of the disease of slow dying and slow living, the mother surprised both son and Alzheimer’s by turning tragedy into triumph.

Hear from Chai Kee on how the memoir of an uneducated matriarch’s roller-coasting life from pre-WWII into the new millennium evolves into an accidental manual on how to face and fight adversity in his book ‘Even When She Forgot My Name’.

The talk walks through the four-year writing journey of a first-time author – of how the difficulty in getting out the first 1,000 words became the challenge of cutting out three-fifths of the first draft of 140,000 words, of how friends and editors helped to keep the writing going and on track, and of how the author combined his seasoned sensitivity as a psychotherapist with his developing craft of writing a full-length book.

Due to limited places for each session, please register! Registration can be made at http://golibrary.nlb.gov.sg, ‘Experience Singapore Literature.’

The Author

A Melbourne University-trained psychologist, Wong Chai Kee has  run his own management consultancy firm, with a 190-strong client list of multinational, government-linked and mainboard-listed companies, for twenty-two years. He loves writing, and has written numerous articles on psychology and on Christianity. A voracious reader, especially of memoirs and history, he has an insatiable urge to buy books, despite reading at least a page of every book bought.

The Poetry Clinic
Saturday, 14 November, 4.30 – 6.00 pm
Visitor’s Briefing Room, Level 1, National Library Building

Roses are read, violets are…violated? If you’re tongue-tied and writer-blocked when it comes to writing verses, join us at the Poetry Clinic!

Let the Poetry Clinic doctor, Felix Cheong, give your writing a reality check. Bring along your poem for a one-on-one consultation with this award-winning writer who has published three collections and has performed his work at numerous international writers’ festivals. His latest collection ‘Sudden in Youth: New and Selected Poems’ was recently launched on 31 October at the Singapore Writer’s Festival.

In this session, Felix will ‘diagnose’ your poem – what works and what doesn’t. He’ll even prescribe ‘bitter medicine’ and techniques you can try.

So squeeze out your creative juices and let it flow!

Due to limited spaces, registration is required. To register, please email Athena_AZIZ@nlb.gov.sg with ‘The Poetry Clinic’ in the subject header with the following information by 7 November:

We’ll confirm your registration via email within 3 working days.

1) Your Personal Details: Name, Contact Number and Email Address
2) How long have you been writing? (It does not matter if it’s your first attempt!)

12 September 2009 : Experience Singapore Literature ‘Voices’

Click here for the pictures!

“As a relative newcomer to Singapore, I was drawn to the “Experience Singapore Literature: Voices” workshop because I had always wondered what was happening in Singapore to help those living in the margins of what can feel like a very competitive and consumerist society.  I was so inspired by the presenters and their obvious compassion for the communities they try to understand and support.  Using their stories and experiences as a springboard for our own creative work was a great idea, as it made our own work more informed and meaningful.  I also appreciated the fact that participants were given a choice of which genre (poetry, prose or drama) to work in, and that each genre had an expert facilitator to guide us, so that we could explore ideas outside of our own comfort zones.  The warm and welcoming tone of the workshop allowed me, a foreigner, to meet a lot of new people and see a completely different side to Singapore.  I think now that whenever I walk through Geylang, or see a group of migrant nannies or construction workers, I will remember that there are people in Singapore as concerned about them as I am, and that they are not alone in their suffering.

Writing from different perspectives is vital in maintaining our own personal creativity and in raising awareness in others of new ways of looking at old issues and situations.  I would love to see the ideas that took fruit in the workshop be further developed, maybe with experiential writing trips, more discussions, readings and eventual publications.  My thanks go to all those with the vision of making Singapore a better place for putting together this workshop and for welcoming me into their midst!”

Jacyntha England, English / Drama Teacher
ISS Singapore

I love the idea of experiential writing trips, I think this is a step to take such a programme further. Not only was this programme an eye-opener for the participants, it was one even for the co-organiser - me! Working with Alvin Tan from The Necessary Stage has always been an enriching and educational experience.

First and foremost, am sorry to the participants who came earlier and waited outside the library till 10am to be let in when the library opened. I will take this into consideration next time and cater for private access, I promise. Of course, for this programme I had such great participants that none of them complained or got angry!

Hearing about the marginalised in society from Jolovam, Yock Leng and Yi-sheng who shared the plights of migrant workers, sex workers in Singapore and gay writing (although as Yi-sheng puts it he doesn’t feel marginalised!) respectively brought us to a very interesting and intense discussion.

After the guidance by 3 of our mentors; Alvin Tan from The Necessary Stage, Poet Yi-sheng and Writer Tan Teck Howe to write either for theatre, poetry or prose, all of us had an amazing time enjoying everyone’s outcomes – the readings, the plots and the acting!