Thumboo, E. "Interview with Norbert Schaffeld, Breman" in Anglistik. Eds. Rüdiger Ahrens. Germany: Department for English and American Studies, University of Würzburg. 12 (2).September 2001.

SINGAPORE IN FOCUS

EDWIN THUMBOO, Singapore,
In Interview with NORBERT SCHAFFELD, Bremen

Today, with almost half a century of poetic writing to his credit, Edwin Thumboo, poet, critic, editor and academic, is generally regarded as Singapore's major poetic voice in English as well as the city state's preeminent literary representative and spokesperson, f not as one of the most accomplished writers of Southeast Asia.

Edwin Thumboo, who was born in the northern part of the island in 1933, grew up in a largely Chinese household with Teochew as his mother tongue. It was this language he practised until the age often, although his father was a Tamil with an anglicised background. Later on he became fluent in English. After completing his university education with a degree in History, English Literature and Philosophy, he started work as an administration official, only to go back to university in 1966 to write a thesis on African poetry. Edwin Thumboo is now Emeritus Professor of English at the National University of Singapore and currently Director of the Centre for the Arts.

Edwin Thumboo's poetry has been published in four collections: Rib of Earth (1956), Gods Can Die (1977), Ulysses by the Merlion (1979) and A Third Map (1993). He has also edited several anthologies, among them Seven Poets: Singapore/Malaysia, An Anthology (1973), The Second Tongue: An Anthology of Poetry from Malaysia and Singapore (1976), Anthology of ASEAN Literatures: The Poetry of Singapore (1985) and Journeys: Words, Home and Nation: Anthology of Singapore Poetry (1995).

Bearing in mind aspects of style and theme, at least three developmental stages of Edwin Thumboo's poetry can be identified. His early nature or love lyric of the 1950s gives voice to the experience of a private reality, in which the poet's principal interest covers the aesthetic and the metaphysical, an individual sensuousness as well as the natural habitat, which is either seen as an external entity or the source of symbolic reference. In the mid 1970s the emphasis moved from the inner world to the outer world, from the private to the public, from the landscape of rural Singapore to the cityscape of competition and achievement. Though occasionally written in a moralistic mode or that of critical implication, these poems do not discredit the intrinsic texture of the state. They rather probe the possibilities of an active civic involvement. From the late 1970s onwards, Edwin Thumboo further explores his commitment to a multi-ethnic nation state, at times articulating a cultural vision or dream that scrutinises a many-sided past for those elements on which a Singapore  future could be built.

Edwin Thumboo's self-assessment as a "myth-inclined poet" turns out to be a rather apt description of his poetic predilections. And it is here that the advantages or privileges of his education are felt most strongly. Thus, in his poetry, references to the orient co-exist with allusions to European classical mythology in a way which is still accessible across the diverse cultures of his readership.

N.SCH.: Edwin, you have made a name for yourself as an acclaimed poet, critic, editor and scholar. Would you say that these realms have a stimulating effect on each other or do you see any detrimental moments of interference?

E.TH: This is a challenging question as there are intricate pros and cons. The roles are complimentary. Take the role of poet, critic, and the poet-critic. The latter has certain advantages. As you know, every poet is a critic because he has to revise his poetry. He/she starts off with an idea or word or phrase, and gradually builds it up. In the course of doing so, he revises as necessary, from all points of view. He would want to know, for instance, if it's got the right tact, and the right tone, the right rhythm. That its pace expands and contracts, regulating its intensity through various verbal devices, as an essential part of the poem's structure. There is a tremendous amount of self-criticism. As you know, before this current growth of critical theory, all the great criticism came from poets. Look at English Literature - Sidney, Ben Jonson, Dryden, Samuel Johnson, Coleridge, Arnold and Eliot. You have a whole line of great critics there. So the creator as critic can have advantages. If you are a poet and you criticise poetry you have a practicing sense of the mechanics. And poetry involves the most complex handling of language: at its best; at its worst; at its most open; at its most deeply coded.

The insights it gives you are useful when you approach any text or verbal structure, including drama and fiction. Read every text, hear every text with the same attention you give to poetry. The discourse is different, but careful reading always pays off. A critic who also works in a university has other advantages. You have a larger base of reference, and intimate contact with literature. You know the importance of tradition. Like for instance the kind of sense that Eliot has of it in his "Tradition and the Individual Talent" where a young writer sees himself in the context of predecessors, contending with the possibilities of the language and so on.

N.SCH.: What about your role as an editor, anthologist, and scholar?

E.TH.: As you imply, these are interrelated activities. They are influenced by time and place. If your literature is large and powerful like British poetry, you have got so much to pick from to fulfil the aims of an anthology. Even when you take a period of that poetry - Romantic, Victorian, Modern - there is enough for a number of anthologies each reflecting different interests. There are additional considerations, special problems, when anthologising in a young, multi-cultural country such as Singapore. As in much else, you start from scratch, with little or no precedence/examples. An editor/anthologist has to define a field, however tentatively, with what material is available. That material is sometimes not enough for a rigorous selection. But you proceed because the act of anthologising is an act of encouragement, of identify lines of development, of proposing a rough set of signposts, touchstones, if only for them to be superseded. It is at the start of that start; the beginnings of a literary history. There is not enough to allow a chronological approach. That is why it was thematic in The Second Tongue where the poems are arranged under "Place and Time", "Growing Up", "Folkways", "Kampong and Town", and so on. Judging what is to go in, or what is to be left out, is not easy. This is where your practice as a poet or as a novelist comes in because then you are aware of a larger range of problems in the formation of literature. Especially if you have grown up with it, as my generation had. For instance, experiments with language. A bad poem may be uniquely instructive. You may not want to include it, but finally do, because it is historically important. In other words the editor's function is not pure, unadulterated. I have sometimes put in a poem to encourage the poet. There are intentions; there are agendas.

The roles you have brought together in your question are much interrelated. Which brings me to scholarship. As you know, up to quite recently, scholarship was generally devoted to canonical texts. The work ranges from scholarly editing to exegesis, to interpretation that attempts to add to, or vary, what has been done. This kind of scholarship is what interests me still. I wrote an article on Shakespeare's Macbeth almost 45 years ago. While teaching the play, I became convinced that he had very subtly shown Duncan over-praising Macbeth's achievement in quelling Macdonald's rebellion. I made the point that that raised Macbeth's sense of self worth and stoked his ambition. You trace an idea; you anchor it in a text, quoting chapter and verse to prove your point. You search through the criticism, which is extensive as Macbeth has attracted a great deal. I had it published in the Shakespeare Quarterly. Such work engages a different set of interests, and requires a different kind of discipline to those inherent in writing poetry. But it involves the close study of language at work, the language of a supreme master in this instance. That is always instructive. Moreover, I think the scholarly side of one's activities is also important because it brings in a necessary conservative attitude to literature.

N.SCH.: You say 'necessary'?

E.TH.: Yes. And for two reasons. We are talking of literature in English, of which the bulk is English Literature, though now the main force comes from American Literature and from a few older masters such as Raja Rao, diaspora writers such as Salman Rushdie, Kazuo Ishiguro and Amy Tan, and Derek Walcott, Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Wole Soyinka who are all notable contributors. Ours was among the first English Departments to teach Commonwealth Literature and - given our antecedents - Asian literature in translation. The temptation is to exclude a large part of the traditional canon to create room. Perhaps I should have said 'temperate attitude', to ensure a balance between the old and new. In order to maintain the rigours of our discipline, to maintain its attractiveness, we need a balanced selection of texts for courses across all years of study.

While scholarship and poetry both need imagination, they need it in different ways. The creator tends to be a person in search of all the colours of a rainbow. Broadly speaking, the scholar will operate within a narrower range. The scholar shapes, puts within a structure which is substantially predetermined; the poet has to go adventurous with all sorts of ideas arising from a freewheeling imagination, with the structure chiefly implicit in the exploration. But I often feel the distinction should be collapsed. The ideal is for the critic to be also a scholar and the scholar to be a critic. Ultimately, we judge a piece of work for what it is, irrespective of whether it is by a scholar-critic, by a poet-critic, by scholar or by poet. You know the range of things we teach our students. They are creative, hopefully. And stimulating, again hopefully. It is not unusual for a student to come in to show you a poem. You do your best to help him, by taking him seriously, by understanding what he is trying to do, and the thrust of his style. Help him to release both his style and his poem. Comment with honesty and all possible tact, which is not always easy. He goes back, revises and returns. I persuade my students to revise a poem as much, and as far as they can. That is how they train themselves. By working at their limits, they go beyond them.

N.SCH.: When you mentioned the process of revising a poem, I was reminded of the Australian poet Robert Gray, whom my wife and I invited last summer. We wanted to pick him up at the hotel and met him in the lounge where he was just re-writing one of his poems, I mean, one that had already been published. Are you the same kind of poet?

E.TH.: I would definitely want to be. A poem becomes more satisfactory to the poet with revision. Robert Graves revised endlessly. So did Yeats. I sometimes think that there are two points of view. First: when is a poem finished? When the poet feels exhausted, which is why he returns to work on it, when his energy returns. Second: a poet changes. The question is, should he revise an early poem? Would it not be re-writing its history? Your discourse might have changed; your general attitude might have altered. It's not the same person who does the revising; it's not the same sensibility; it's not the same interests stirring the mind.

Having said that, I would say it depends on the poem. One for a friend should not subsequently suffer radical surgery, as that would affect sentiment and the general thrust of the poem. It is a gift. I mean if you start revising, the friend is going to wonder which is more important: poem as poem, or poem as friend, or friend as friend. The urge to revise is always there. It is a creative itch.

On another point. We retain our vocabulary; we nurse it; we add to it. The more obscure words are tucked away somewhere in the brain. The more familiar words, those we live by daily, are relatively stable, unless a big movement overtakes them, like it did with 'gay'. But part of our vocabulary matures, as it were, takes on greater significance in our lives.

N.SCH.: Surveying some five decades of your creative writing, critics have noticed the shift from an inward-looking perspective to a focus on the social context you are part of. Do you think that this is an adequate description of your development?

E.TH.: Yes and no. When you talk about a poet in his social context, you touch matters of vital interest to the whole of thinking society. I repeat what I have said before in response to similar questions. There is a significant difference: writing in a situation of all-round continuity as compared with/contrasted to writing in a situation where that continuity - interrupted by colonialism - is being restored, revived, re negotiated and so on. The difference is that of living and working and writing in a nation that is homogeneous because of a shared history, and the existence of common institutions and traditions, such as language and literature, religion and philosophy, all of which create a national identity, and living and working in one still largely in process. The unity that exists takes time to emerge. Ex-colonies of the English-using Commonwealth have not had that kind of time. For, apart from having to tackle a host of internal problems, they face the increasingly sharp inequalities of a highly competitive world economic order. To talk of nationhood is to talk about a whole series of complexities, of hopes and nightmares, and of necessary things to be done.

The situations are radically different. In the first, there is a dominant tradition to which the writer belongs. He is part of a community, part of a continuity. His language is the language of the tribe. Eliot's essay, "Tradition and the Individual Talent", which I mentioned earlier, sets out the context and connections and challenges. Distinctive as they are, the literatures of Europe 'common antecedents, and to the extent that he is able to refer to the literature of Europe, and one, moreover, having a simultaneous existence and order. It is hinterland to the individual literatures, in the way that the literature in the individual languages is the hinterland for the individual writer. The parameters are clear. The writer's interest may extend to works in other languages and be influenced by them. There is no compulsion. He remains a German, Russian or Spanish writer. His environment is dominated by a single, distinctive culture. But behind that culture is a common inheritance of millennia.

In contrast - and here I turn to the situation of the new literatures in English - some have to live in a milieu defined by a multiplicity of cultures. To be viable, the political, social, economic, educational challenges have to be approached with the needs of different ethnic groups. There are many sensitivities. I need only mention religion and race. When either or, worse still, both get mixed up with and in politics, the most rational of people can do extreme things. I was in Arab Street when the Maria Hertogh riots broke out in 1950 and saw the carnage.

It was also a time of powerful forces as society and people sought development and consolidation. It was a moment when as individuals we were drawn into a deeper engagement with events. We who grew up in the 50s and felt the fires of nationalism, the fervour of wanting the freedom to make our own destiny, became - and remained - deeply aware of the larger issues that were shaping the individual and society. They generated subjects and themes that were important to us. But not to those in the mainstream, which is hardly surprising as they were the colonialists. We write in English. The literature of its chief metropolitan centre is not currently preoccupied explicitly with nationalism, nation, patriotism, and identity. These themes belong to the time of nation-making. They are there in Shakespeare, Michael Drayton, Christopher Marlowe and other writers when Elizabethan England was establishing herself. Is not Henry V a statement of deep nationalism? Are not the English-majority jibes about the Welsh and the Irish typical of the situation then? And why is Francis Drake venerated? Quite rightly so!

N.SCH.: Yes, I agree, but what makes a writer, a poet especially, tackle these problems in the way he does? What is his specific situation and how does it influence him? And going back to the last question, would you say that in your poetry there is indeed a shift from the private to the public?

E.TH.: Yes and no. They engage me because they are there, a reality. And they influence me by making me more fully aware of the political dimensions that underlie much of modem society. Of what is happening, within Singapore, the region and internationally. But the writer needs to be cautious. Having seen its importance, he may find it difficult to keep political awareness in proportion. That can be hard in certain matters. It's like the fear you have of race and religion getting mixed in politics when you have witnesses at close range what that can do to normally sober people.

In an article published some years ago in Solidarity, a Philippines' journal edited by the distinguished novelist Sionil Jose, I made the point that each writer has his grammar of interests. These depend on the historical moment he is born into. If it is in an old, firmly established nation with a powerful literary tradition, he knows his predecessors, he knows his contemporaries, and seeks his direction and place among them. His themes are directly or indirectly connected to his times, but they are unlikely to be nation- and identity-building. But in the new literatures, these are major considerations. Our first political poems forty to fifty years ago were labelled propaganda. How ironic that politics, variously understood, is the basis of/for so much criticism/cultural studies today. How ironic that theories, say, about power were for some of us, the experience of power, as an imposition. In such a setting, the whole function of making yourself into a writer, and being made into a writer, takes on much more complexity. You have two traditions, your own and those that come with English. For, interestingly enough, if you look at the majority of writers in the new literatures, most of the first generation are graduates in English. Take Singapore and Malaya/Malaysia. Almost every writer of the first generation was a graduate in English: Goh Sin Tub, Lim Thean Soo, Ee Tiang Hong, Wong Phui Nam, Lloyd Fernando, Lee Kok Liang - he did law but I think English was part of his BA from Melbourne. The trend has continued with Arthur Yap, Robert Yeo, Lee Tzu Pheng, Mohd. Haji Salleh, K. S. Maniam, Catherine Lim, Ho Poh Fun and Heng Siok Tian. There are of course exceptions like Goh Poh Seng and Gopal Baratham, both medical doctors. Being a student of a language and its literature provides insights into its mechanics for the production of literature.

For us, English was an instrument; rich and powerful and exciting. In using it, we shift it to another climate, our climate, a new habitation. Now if you are, say, in India you have a long literary tradition. So your literary sensibility, your literary inheritance is there. You reshape the language in the way that Raja Rao does in Kanthapura and The Serpent and the Rope. He makes its movement Indian in ways mentioned in his foreword to the former, twisting it to give it an Indian rhythm etc., etc. You re orientate the language. So you put the textures, nuances and the tact of your culture and environment into it as opportunity offers, as occasion demands, as skill allows. In time it will carry our baggage.

The meeting of strong themes, and the study of a powerful literature was challenging. That was when I got to university in 1953. The study of poetry at Victoria School - I was there from 1948 to 1953 - was inspired by good teachers including Shamus Frazer. We had a copy of Palgrave's The Golden Treasury at home. I read and memorised a large number of the shorter lyrics, enjoying their images and metaphors, but especially their neat interplay of rhythms. I started to write, modest, imitative couplets and quatrains, occasionally stringing them together. The subjects were those of adolescence: love, death, separation, the sorrows of life, nostalgia, scenes of rural life and the like. Here is an example:

An interest in words; an interest in poetic subjects. Frazer who took a personal interest, was utterly helpful. With time and a growing maturity as literary apprentice and person, poems became more crafted and serious. I realised that do some of the things I wanted effectively, I had to develop my own style. For the kind of poems I wanted to write. You've got to find your own voice, absorbing influences, taking without either imitating disastrously, or being put off for good because of the feeling that you will never get anywhere. W. B. Yeats was a major influence. Shakespeare, Keats, Poe, Beddoes, and Eliot were instructive influences. They helped develop my sense of rhythm, of colour in words, of structure, pattern. Shakespeare, the rhythms of Shakespeare: they are confident, infectious. Eliot's influence was relatively less difficult to outgrow. He was intellectual; of the mind, rather than the blood. He didn't enter your guts. It was possible to hold him at bay much more easily. Yeats wove himself into you.

But coming back to your question. I mentioned the grammar of interest. As mine developed, I sought a style with a range that allowed me to move in two directions. In an important sense, the lyric impulse is necessary. But I wanted a range in the voice to make it capable of handling societal themes. That would create space for the handling of the public side of themes, in poems like "The Exile", "The National Library, Singapore" and "A Quiet Evening". Some see a division in my style, between the lyrical and the more direct, public voice. They say I am a public poet. Some of the poems I read during this Conference ["Colonies, Missions, Cultures in the English-Speaking World", Tubingen, 6-11 April 1999] were lyrical. And they were written recently. This question about a shift from an inward-looking perspective to an external one framed by a social, or political, context tends to create a dichotomy from what can more usefully be seen as a continuum. That's why I said yes and no.

And it's not only the person. We grow old: we add new interests, shed old interests. We are moving all the time. Moreover, many of us are not full-time writers. We serve the Muse part-time. She is a demanding mistress. This is part of the pain, the tragedy. We administer, we profess; we do all these. Our language is traded, exchanged in administration. If we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that these many, other things affect our imaginative lives, inhibiting their journeys and their translation into poetry. So the lyric side, I hope, continues because ultimately it's the lyric impulse that makes the poet.

N.SCH.: You have been called the father figure of Singapore poetry in English. You are also a highly influential anthologist. Though perhaps someone else should answer this question, nonetheless, I would like to ask you how your poetical and thematic predilections might have influenced the younger generation of poets?

E.TH.: As you say, quite rightly, somebody else should answer the question. But I'll give it a try.

I don't see myself as a father figure. Father figures always get killed. Others may see me as one, perhaps because, of the Singaporeans who started writing in the late 40s and early 50s, I kept going, apart from one long period of silence. I started early; and seriously. In a 1953 editorial in Youth, a magazine for secondary schools in Colonial Singapore, I argued for the creation of a Malayan - we saw the two colonial territories as one - literature. My interest in the growth of Singaporean/Malaysian literature in English over the years is probably responsible. I edited The Flowering Tree, Seven Poets and The Second Tongue, and was the General Editor of the 4 volumes of Singapore poetry and fiction in our four official languages for the Anthology of ASEAN Literatures. And contributed introductions to volumes of poetry by Ee Tiang Hong, Goh Poh Seng, Mohd. Haji Salleh, Ghulam Sarwar, Simon Tay, Ho Poh Fun, Heng Siok Tian and others. And discussed their work with them.

It is difficult to say to what extent I have been an influence, or the nature of that influence. Perhaps it's been to help show the viability of a Singapore poetry in English through writing poetry. And criticism, to which many others including the late Ee Tiang Hong, and Koh Tai Ann, Robert Yeo, Dudley de Souza, Ban Kah Choon, Bruce Bennett, Lee Tzu Pheng, Kirpal Singh, Rajive Pathke and Leong Liew Geok have made notable contributions.

We write about what we see as important. That much is obvious. The factors that influence us are our own life and the life around us. Life and contacts, a phrase I am fond of using. A reasonable proposition, surely.

Let's look briefly at the last fifty years. In the 50s the sentiment was concurrently pro-national and anti-colonial; a fuller expression of nationalism in the early 60s; with independence, construction, re-construction, development in all areas of national life: the economy, security, political stability, industry, education, culture, foreign relations, and so on. Adjustments to a rapidly changing way - and pace - of life. Some of my poems have these challenges as their theme. There is "NTI", Nanyang Technological Institute. I would like to read it to illustrate what I've just said. It will also allow a chance to let the poem respond to that important point you made earlier in the question directed at the elements of my style.

N.SCH.: When did you write it? What were some of the changes that moved you deeply?

E.TH.: Probably in 1986 when I was revisiting Iowa.

A fair number of historical trends and events are gathered into image and phrase. The original Nanyang University was founded in 1955 by the leading Chinese in Singapore. It meant to give tertiary education to the Chinese-educated in Southeast Asia. China was communist; Taiwan was busy establishing itself. Many of the students were leftists. The British - "stiff upper lip" - raided the campus - hence "black maria", squad cars - on more than one occasion. I believe in textured density, an allusive resonance. But how would a reader without the background have access? And without that, can be judge? The same point is there regarding access to Dennis Brutus' Sirens, Knuckles, Boots: how much would understanding, interpretation and judgement depend on which side of the apartheid line one stood, and whether it was felt in all its force, or as a historical footnote?

Regarding your second question: change was constant. Singapore had to assemble both the strategies and the means to first survive; then to develop. We went into Malaysia in 1963, but left it in 1965. The shortness of our stay, especially after the extensive mobilisation of support for entry, is indicative of the trauma. You know when we left Malaysia there was nobody to defend us. I mean literally, if the British weren't there we could have been in trouble. Then the British pulled out their armed forces in 1973. That meant the loss to the economy of many million pounds annually. Their presence protected our start.

But with careful planning and people-support, we prospered, which in turn gave them greater confidence. It starts with good leaders. Now we have the problems that come with success. We have become international before we are sufficiently national. There is the question of identity, as Singaporean Malays, Chinese, Indians and Eurasians. You start thinking about the long-term implications. What happens if you are a small, affluent country, and your citizens, especially the young, are in touch with the world through travel, cable vision, and videos? The impact of English/American mass media is great. They purvey alternative life styles. You use English. The whole modern, mass media world is in English. Almost everything conceivable, and inconceivable, is in English. So what happens? The younger generation, who see the prosperity of the present, but fail to appreciate the risks and uncertainty of the recent past, take much for granted. The discipline, caution, the extent to which a relatively small economy is fragile, unless steps are taken to protect it, is a cautionary tale, made remote by current prosperity. And that prosperity raises quite different expectations, and generates comfortable frames of reference. The world is increasingly their oyster, especially regarding the arts. What happens? In literature, there has been a loosening when it comes to accepting what is poetry. Words sung borrow power and effect from the music. They look bare without it. There has been a levelling down. I am against this because I believe it's like disposable art. For me art has to be permanent, as permanent as you can make it; durable. I am convinced of that. The spirit engaged in art is altogether serious, even when it seeks humour; some would say especially. It has to be if it is to succeed in the sense I mean. Criticism is valuable but it must be given in the right spirit and it must be taken in the right spirit. Talent thrives best with discipline and stringent self- criticism. First, and even second drafts are seldom achieved enough. The need to write at the limits of one's ability and experience remains. Alas, not many can make the time to do so. That means you do 80%, 90%; seldom 100%. And 110%? That 105/110% is especially rewarding for the young poet. Incidentally, in an important sense, the greatest stimulation for any poet, but for the young especially, is self- dissatisfaction, creative dissatisfaction. You must be dissatisfied with what you write.

N.SCH.: Having said this, do you consider an anthology as some kind of document of a given time and thus imply a theory of development of Singapore culture?

E.TH.: Yes definitely, taking the literature as paradigm. The theory is implicit; practice far more evident. Government and community leaders have commented on culture over the years. The most recent is the vision of Singapore as a Renaissance city in the new millennium.

The way I see it, there is a striking parallel between the search for literary structure - as essential to articulation - and the evolution of societal types. The old debate of which model to follow has been settled in favour of a Singapore with different ethnic groups retaining their cultural roots but sharing a common Singapore identity based on core values. Briefly it is through English, the language of education, administration, technical and service industries, the media and the other sinews of a modern, global city, that the majority of Singaporeans work and live. Bridging the different ethnic groups, it helps to circulate and promote a shared Singapore identity, one that is already there, and growing.

The early phases of new literatures, especially those with multi-ethnic settings, are usually taken up with the realisation of types. The more successful the society, the greater the social, economic, professional mobility, especially in one that promotes meritocracy. First generation farmer-housewife; second generation clerk-nurse; third generation Cambridge Double First. This is repeated less dramatically almost through society. The rapid mobility affects the emergence and stabilisation of new types beyond labels like 'yuppies', 'ah bengs' and so on. The writer from any one ethnic group, familiar with the social and psychological types that structure life and contacts in his ethnic precincts, would find it very challenging to handle those of another group with equal conviction and authority. Apart from the short-story, it is poetry that suits the situation, thriving on nuggets of experience.

But it is also the beginnings of a literature, with the works tentative, exploratory, and the ratio between satisfactory and weak ones low. The anthologist takes a subject/theme approach; there is not enough to sustain a chronological one. He looks at the poems, the search for articulation, the changing society of which it is part, and an index. It is an act defining a society and one of its arts at a given moment. Then both move on. In a sense, it serves to embarrass both the old and the young. You go on to write something better, or something different at least.

N.SCH.: Going back to an earlier question regarding poems in which you address the themes of love and friendship, you talked about personal faith and faith in people, as well as of loss and suffering. In what way, may I ask you, have humanist impulses or religious concepts shaped your approach?

E.TH.: The spiritual has always been part of my awareness. But it was not, in the early years, attached to any orthodoxy, any doctrine, though even then I felt it would, sooner or later. The light of the spirit is important. A strong sense of the spiritual is important for moral, ethical reasons. We need an external authority, one infinitely larger than ourselves. I became a Christian. But humanistic impulse has been there right from the beginning. And Christianity has a potent humanistic tradition. Humanism free of bigotry is an excellent base for life and contacts in a multi-cultural society. Where does this humanism come from? Parents, teachers, friends; folk tales, myths, legends, literature, biographies, news reports etc. But above all, reflection.

And above that The Bible; for others the Koran, the Bhagavad-Gita, the Diamond Sutra, The Analects and so on. Nothing is irrelevant; everything makes itself relevant. Friends have always been important. They teach, share, correct, sympathise, protect etc., etc., enriching, and ennobling one's life. Friendship poems are virtually a sub- genre in my poetry.

I mentioned the importance of reflection, and therefore, of language. Language as unique instrument, as history, as disclosure, as promise of new meaning, as image, as symbol, that makes consciousness possible, and significant, is in serious danger of decline in the general population. Given developments in the mass media, particularly in TV, and the internet more recently, we are increasingly made to rely on the visual image at the expense of the verbal image. The danger here is that visual images break down into shapes and colour. Moreover they do not have a stable grammar. The verbal image returns to language.

N.SCH.: So, personally, you would not maintain that humanism is finally the ideal man (festation and outlook of human nature?

E.TH.: I personally don't think so. But I know it is the case for some people, who include those I deeply respect. Humanism has been sufficient; they don't need a religion because the humanism becomes their religion. E. M. Forster for instance. You know their humanism is their religion because ultimately they get from it what the great religions offer: morality, sensitivity, and veneration for life, sympathy, kindness, understanding, charity, and so on. As Cyril Fielding puts it in Forster's A Passage to India: "I am a priest without a religion". While belief has to be gained, and maintained in both, one difference between humanism and Christianity is that the latter contains its version of the former; but the former does not contain much of the gifts of Christianity. The sense of eternity for instance.

N.SCH.: When I read the poem "Conversation with My Friend Kwang Mm at Loong Kwang of Outram Park"! was struck by the sense of past as permanent present. And it is in "Ulysses by the Merlion" that you tend to blend the past, the present and the future. What is the spec role of history in your writing?

E.TH.: I think history enters my writing, as it ought to enter the writing of others, because of its importance in our lives. I go back to this point about the historical moments we occupy. As a former colony, a multi-racial one, created by the British, we need history for a sense of things; to re-inscribe ourselves; discover and, in certain areas, define ourselves as individuals, as groups in a multi-racial society. Of Singaporeans, only the Malays have a long, full history in the region because this is their only part of the world. The Chinese came chiefly from southern China, the Indians from south India. Knowing the history of China and the history of India is useful. They give you a sense of their belonging, which also happens to be mine. They give you an inherited identity that you put together by being conscious of what you have absorbed, or taken. I live in Singapore; I have likes and dislikes, a set of interests, a set of values, a set of responsibilities and so on. History I see as fully inclusive, fully in terms of one's personal limits. And it includes beliefs, and anything of significance. As I said earlier, nothing is irrelevant. For instance, Buddhism's Four Noble Truths and Noble Eightfold Path contains much that anyone who wants to live right will find most useful.

I teach literature, conduct a course in poetry writing, and write poetry myself. These are the considerations that influence my interest in cultural universals of India and China. My interest in their poetry in translation is boosted by sentiment, but not much more than my interests in other poetries, and far more limited than my interest in English poetry, and poetry in English. It is worth noting that the study of English Literature and the use of English Language take you out of your country. It doesn't bring you back. So history then, is a route home. And home is many places: Singapore most powerfully, Southeast Asia as a region, and the ancestral lands that still exert a tug. Put together, they give you a bearing, an identity. If I had my way I'll make history a compulsory subject.

N.SCH.: You studied history as a major...

E.TH.: Yes; and I would have majored in history if the class had been smaller.

N.SCH.: You are not only a citizen of a multi-cultural city-state but also a well- travelled scholar with numerous contacts on all continents. Now, Tennyson's Ulysses said "I am a part of all that I have met' which to me seems to sum up your credo, too. Would you agree with me?

E.TH.: Absolutely. I am a part of all that I have met and that of course stands for something larger. I am a part of all that I have read; have seen, and heard, and touched, and drunk. As you say, we expand through the contributions from many sources. So we travel into cultures, we travel cross cultures.

N.SCH.: Earlier on we touched upon the role of Yeats for your work. You referred to yourself as a myth-inclined poet, who was to some extent influenced by Yeats. What is the function of myth in the context of Singapore Literature in English, or, for that matter, in the new English literatures in general?

E.TH.: Very complex, important question. As far as I know, we have one myth, the todak, the swordfish attacking Singapore, and one mythical creature, the merlion. Some would add the lion Sang Nila Utama saw on the shore when he approached the island. Hence the Lion City, Singapura. This excludes a whole tradition of Malay, Chinese and Indian myths to which we are, technically speaking, heirs. They come in, occasionally, as defining metaphor. How does myth, the old established ones that often provide a stable, generally understood reference point for allusion, have significance in times where both symbols and narrative bites have a short shelf life? And there is that other point. It is hard for myths and the mythical forms of one culture to take general root in a multi-cultural society. Only a modern mythic form such as the Merlion can. That is contentious, no doubt. I used it to suggest Singapore's link to the sea, in a poem too uncomfortable for some because Ulysses is made to visit. The collocation seems to demand too much for, and from, them. Some object to the Merlion as it is artificial, or that the Singapore Tourism Board uses it to advertise. But what of the Unicorn? It must have been artificial at one point, not to mention tourist mileage.

Myths are important because they help you develop structures in different parts of society. They help provide a measure of continuity. They are powerful, recurring narratives, embedded too deep in a culture to ever become clichés. Or so basic that their effect is repetitively certain. A full myth-system is a totality you ride through, as you deal with life and death; nobility and ugliness; loyalty and betrayal; cause and effect; the importance of an oath. They help you deal with every aspect of experience. These are probably among the reasons behind the very extensive use of myth by Yeats who had the whole Irish system at hand. Its structures and other lessons helped him construct another when his reading of history required its own mythic structure.

Someone thought that modern Singapore needed one. Hence the Merlion's logic summing up the historic bond between island and the sea, stressing a strategic location still valid today. Hence my poem, and the allusions that give it context. The Merlion as conjoined myth.

N.SCH.: And in the new English literatures?

E.TH.: Myths are structures and narratives. They create and carry spaces into which new narratives can be inserted to counterpoint the old. Wong Phui Nam's early poems explored the immigrant Malaysian with recourse to the Osiris myth in which the central act of dismemberment is tapped as commentary. Mudrooroo's poem, "The Black Bittern", that deals with a spiritual journey taking the protagonist to India through Singapore and other places of insight and revelation, uses a tribal myth. And Bessie Head constructs a mythic structure in A Question of Power by drawing on Greek myth, various religions and historic personages to function as correlatives as she explores the sources, nature and the operations of good and evil. Writers will use myth, directly and indirectly, updating, modifying, inventing, re-inventing, inverting, as they see fit. After all, they are tapping a major source of meaning-making, meaning-management.

N.SCH.: As a critic interested in Irish Literature, do you see Yeats as relevant to the new English literatures through his interest in a New Ireland that was culturally autonomous, at ease with her past and present, free and national, so that Irish Literature can be seen as the first version of all new post-colonial literatures?

E.TH.: You are absolutely right. Ireland was the first 'Third World' country. She became a colony in the 12^th century of the British who were still Anglo-Normans. I called Yeats a 'Third World' poet some years ago. Anglo-Irish, he gradually moved from the first to the second half of the hyphen by increasingly anchoring his life and poetry in Ireland, an Ireland of fact and myth. What led to the Irish Revival, especially in literature, covers much of the ground of the new literatures in English. With Yeats there was a major difference. He wrote for Ireland, not against the British. In the poems inspired by the Easter 1916 uprising - it was a national call to arms - he lamented the tragedy, not the colonialism. The new literatures had anti-colonial poems, liberation poems. Had Yeats been taught with some sense of his nationalism, his influence on the new literatures would have been greater. It was long after I left university that I discovered this Yeats, when his uncollected writings were gathered. His Macmillan volumes were, by and large, sanitised.

N.SCH.: As a poet, how do you cope with metonymic gaps, i.e. references to your specific cultural background which might be unknown to the other ethnic community or readers outside Singapore?

E.TH.: You raise what is perhaps the most profound question that has to be addressed in the study, understanding, analysis and evaluation of the new literatures in English. Metonymic gaps are not new. Unless there is a full sharing of life and contacts, they are there to a greater or lesser degree, as between different social levels, U and non-U. The gaps are far larger across cultures. Serious students of Shakespeare plough through the notes of the Arden and other editions for a fuller understanding. We went through E. M. W. Tillyard's The Elizabethan World Picture and Arthur 0. Lovejoy's The Great Chain of Being.

This is really difficult. I touched on it slightly when talking about the NTI poem. The problem is resolvable far more easily by the novelist. I mean by including an explanatory clause, footnote, or providing a glossary. Again, in drama, you have a much larger range of possibilities. But not for the poet. In one of my poems there is reference to the trial of Anwar Ibrahim, the former Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia, who was charged with sodomy, then convicted, and, later, similarly, for abuse of power. I refer to the episode as Hkkayat, story. Now for the Malay, Sejara is history. The choice is deliberate: history is supposed to be accurate; story can be embellished, like myths. That is a comment on the trial, whose twists and turns caused some to wonder, with each report, where did the truth lie? I also referred to two of their very powerful cultural heroes, Hang Tuah and Hang Jebat. Unless you knew these significances - and not every non-Malay, or non-Bahasa speaker, does - the poem would lose texture and resonance. Ironies are lost. In all probability, as time goes on, the poetry will become more detailed and more embedded in one's background, one's culture, one's history. And the more embedded it is, the more remote will it be from the generalisations that are international. So the problem will be there, for the outsider. But there is that other trend, the increasingly shared experience of globalisation. And there are the mass media, and the internet. Together, they may well create a layer of vocabulary and usage possessing creative potential.

But are annotations the answer? For instance, in "Conversation with My Friend Kwang Min […]" it would help the reader to know that Kuan Yin is the Chinese Goddess of Mercy: serene and compassionate, the quiet point of a turbulent world. And the lotus is a major symbol in both Buddhism and Hinduism, and prefigures, firstly, the firmer link between the two religions personified in the figure of Hanuman and, secondly, his absorption into the Chinese pantheon as Wu Kong, the Monkey God, who then "Adventured home to India! In search of texts." Readers familiar with Chinese folklore will recall his exploits in the course of protecting the abbot en-route to India, which I bring into the poem through "Adventured". So, too, for those who know Arthur Waley's Monkey. You see, Chinese culture is very powerful. Like all powerful cultures it transmutes and indigenises: Hanuman becomes the thoroughly Chinese Wu Kong. Rama's faithful follower in the Ramayana becomes immortal, and immortalised, in China. He visited heaven, was told of the fruit of immortality, forbidden, but which he ate in any case. He's mischievous, he's very powerful, he's cunning in a good way; he fights demons. If we think the poem is worth the effort then we should annotate. On the other hand, if you don't annotate, how is the reader to' make a just assessment?

I'm sure you remember the amount of effort we put in to recover the Elizabethan background, the great chain of being, the theory of correspondences etc., when we studied Shakespeare. More the case when it was Chaucer. I recall Eileen Power's Medieval People and C. S. Lewis' Allegory of Love as part of preparatory reading. And those endless articles in the PMLA. And there were the volumes in the Penguin Guide to English Literature which invariably started with a longish background chapter; and Basil Willey's background books; and G. M. Trevelyan's Social History of England. The list goes on.

A time will come - I believe it has, in some instances - when the new literatures are no longer new, and should be treated as 'stand alone' literatures. While they are in English, a variety of English, by culture and environment they are definitely not. We might have to use some of the methods of comparative literature as part of a more comprehensive, holistic approach. We have no choice. We should treat each as a separate literature, but one with many relatives, some closely, some distantly, related. It doesn't mean that just because it's largely the same language it's the same literature. It has to be different because the cultures are different. They have their own content and priorities.

N.SCH.: In the endeavour to tune literary theory to the phenomenon of the new English literatures, some scholars have recently taken up the concept of localization to express the interdependence between growing global networks and local identity formations. Your poetry, one might argue, places and distinguishes Singapore's de-colonised local, or regional, identity within a global matrix of Anglo- European and Asian reference. Would you subscribe to this view?

E.TH.: I think we cannot avoid subscribing to this view of interdependence. But there are dangers here. Interdependence on whose terms, and in what areas, would be among the questions we need to raise. In politics, in trade, in security, in law, there are international norms, precedents, and agreed procedures. Not in matters of culture. The old power centres are still in business. The new literatures are dependencies, to be described and managed by a criticism which does not seek their inputs. Criticism tends to be universal; writing may have universal appeal, but it tends to be national. Now, in the past criticism was never global, never international, at least not on the present scale. The French had their approach; Germans, Russians, Czechs and the British, theirs. The British usually bothered least with theory. But its global rise in the last twenty years or so gives criticism an independence and power that swamps literature. There is reason for this. Criticism is cumulative; its whole weight is brought to bear on one single work.

Currently, I get the feeling that citing theory often enough passes off as criticism. We refer to intertextuality. Is there not reason to label criticism feeding on criticism 'inter-criticality'? I am concerned with keeping ourselves busy as teachers, scholars, critics, interpreters of literature, and conductors of courses in creative writing, and so on. In the hands. of those with a solid, 'traditional' grounding in literature, familiar with one or more critical approaches to the analysis and evaluation of texts, the use of theory is notable for fresh insights and precision. But I am not at all as certain when it comes to the run-of-the-mill use of theory. Theory travels too easily; for this reason, and in a sense, it does not travel. It takes itself to another literature, especially, the new literatures, which have their own reality. Given their experience of colonialism, post-colonialism, neo-colonialism, and the loading of the international system in favour of the nations in Europe and America, theory for them is not theory but actual experience - at times distressing, at others tragic - kept active by memories of exploitation and marginalisation. The 'other' is real, with separate national/ethnic, and, within them, individual identities. Think of the names we can list between Aden to Zanzibar. As Salman Rushdie reminded us, the Empire writes back, and with a power and authority worthy of the Nobel in two, if not four instances.

The labels we use are not helpful. Post-colonial: for how long? Should not Britain and France be post-colonial too? After all they have lost their major colonies, and are post-colonial on a far larger scale. New literatures, which we are using: how new, for how long, and how are we to include India, with beginnings in the early 19^th century? Contact literature: the extent of the contact, and was it voluntary? Should I be saying, at this time, that I write Commonwealth Literature, and not Singapore Literature? Should there be two names for a literature, one as an alias? This is why we badly need a conference on paradigms, definitions, and concepts - with a section on labels - to identify the problems, assess the limitations of present terminology and the distortions it creates, and try to look for useful answers. In the meantime why not try Indian E-lit, Nigerian E-lit, Malaysian E-lit, Sri Lankan E-lit, Pakistan E-lit, Singapore E-lit, and so on. If preferred, as I do, E-lit could be spelt out as Singapore E-literature, with our other literatures labelled as Singapore M-literature, C-literature and I-literature (or T-, for Tamil literature). The strong advantage is clear: immediate identification. The mention of nations brings to mind their writers on the instant. Do not these very positive factors outweigh what reservations may be put forward? And the E literatures do not have to go through post-colonial, or other tunnels.

N.SCH.: Would you argue that careful negotiating between a transplanted and an indigenous culture opens up, or can open up, new cultural vistas?

E.TH.: Absolutely. When we talk about cultures, especially in that kind of situation, the possibilities of mutual enrichment quickly suggest themselves. Multi-ethnic societies, like Singapore's, would experience the widest range of permutations and combinations. It started with three Asian cultures, one, the Malay, in situ, with the Chinese and Indian transplanted. And the colonial presence whose main cultural gift is English, with its literature, and the access it gave to the world. The English-educated multi-ethnic, indigenous middle class that emerged was variously British influenced in dress, what and how they ate - one of my aunties had regular afternoon tea served with the second set of cutlery - taste in literature, music and theatre, gradually extending to world views. Food generated the greatest meeting and mingling. The Eurasians, who were somewhat privileged, were strongly influenced by European lifestyles, an ancestral hand down. How deep the influence went depended on the strength of the inherited culture of the individual and his family. Except for the English-speaking, the Chinese, Indians and Malays on the whole tended to keep to themselves. They had to note, not each other, but the British.

The position changed radically with independence. People had to take each other into account. The ghetto mentality, the ethnic mind enclave, had to be replaced by one more open and multi-racial, and national. Not an easy thing to do. The adjustments to the structure, substance and processes of the major determinants ranging from history, through folkways, religion, custom, culture, education, moral norms, self image, language and social practices, of other ethnic groups, meant adjustments to one's own as well. The goal was one people, one nation. To be Singaporean in our case. That was and is a large, complex challenge.

I think governments tend to be conservative about cultures because they are concerned about the effect of change. And that concern is not their own; it reflects strong public sentiment. A level-headed government is cautious when dealing with issues which, if not properly handled, can cause, or contribute to, serious destabilisation. Culture is politics. Bad culture drives out good culture. But, by what criteria? The adult will of the people, which governments tend to reflect. No government wants to be unpopular. Surely, the more multi-racial a society, the greater the number of sensitive areas, and issues, and, accordingly, the number of pressure groups. But the boundary markers are shifting, as society gets more confident, more affluent. That trend and spirit drives the effort to make Singapore a Renaissance city. The challenge is to fill/extend our cultural space with the aesthetics, creativity, style and production, in a mix that balances the spirit and expectation of our founding cultures, plus the internationalism of a global city. That demands a fine balancing act.

What are some of the creative resources available for the creation of a Singapore Literature in English, a Singapore E-literature? Because the writer inhabits two or more cultures - some more, some less - he has two, perhaps three, traditions to tap. First, there is the English, from Chaucer down, in which the modern, contemporary and current works would be of greatest interest. Writers never cease to learn. That long tradition is a source of instruction as regards technique, and more. So, too, American, and the other literatures in English, including the E-literatures. It all depends on what I have elsewhere called his grammar of interests. And the languages he knows, though English helps unlock, in translation, the literatures of European and Latin America. They can have their pick.

Both these literatures and those of inherited culture(s) form a tremendous body of literature for writer and general reader. For the writer, old forms like the pantun, whose subtlety can accommodate a range of intentions; tone and texture; symbol, imagery and metaphor; rhythm and counterpoint and so on. For instance, the Kuruntokal, a body of Tamil classical poetry, ca second century AD, has conventions whose successful operation requires objects as correlatives, in a manner more complex than Eliot's formulation in his essay on Hamlet. Here are two short poems you can find in The Second Tongue to give indications of what I mean:

and

These are instances of poets drawing into English some of the resources of their inherited culture. But it will be some time yet before all four literatures develop close contact.

This multiplicity of cultural contact makes the younger generation adaptable. Their outlook is international. If their roots aren't strong, and their English encourages them to follow a more Western life style, and they study overseas, there is the temptation not to return. Perth, Western Australia, for instance, is an attractive place. It has the same time-zone as Singapore, and is only five hours away by air. Recently, a friend settled there, mainly because his children went to school in Perth and decided to stay. He sold his house for $3 million, which is something like 2.9 million Australian. With that money he bought a BMW - he didn't want a Merc - a car for his wife, a bungalow in a decent area, a beach house, a small weekend farm, membership of two posh golf clubs, leaving him about 2 million Aussie in fixed deposits.

N.SCH.: At a first glance, one is tempted to ask whether or not there's anything more you can want?

E.TH.: An altogether fair question. Friends and relatives; that circle of close intimacy. He missed his friends, that special kind, with whom you can relax, be off guard with. He is comfortable no doubt, but feels in exile and now they are back in Singapore. It was too late in life to make such friends.

N.SCH.: Just a few years ago you discussed the poet's imagination in terms of its capacity to reshape English in a new cultural context. In what way is a bilingual writer able to achieve a wider perception of reality?

E.TH.: I have rethought that one. I think the imagination develops through the range of things deeply engaged with. It involves the use, and therefore, the development of that language, your fundamental language, the one that makes you, and meets the deepest needs of your intellectual, creative and emotional life, and which remains sufficient for the purposes of living. For almost all of us, it's one language. There are very few people equally proficient, at a high level, in two languages. Beckett, Nabokov, and Ngugi, if he will write in English again. That is the foundation language; the language of our foundations. If the foundation language is not English, then you get the problem Gabriel Okara faced: how to put African thoughts and feelings into English words. He had to vary English in his novel The Voice to do so. That experience is part of the contact with any new language. Find equivalents and invent. "Children should be seen but not heard." = "Children should have ears but no mouth.", which is a literal translation from my mother tongue. And "God bless - have a safe journey." = "May you see the sun rise." Each has its own sweetness. Raja Rao orientated English to reflect the speech rhythms, the discourse of his Indian characters. Then again, it depends on the genre. In poetry, it's the poet's idiolect. If direct speech is involved, its success depends on how effectively it fits the characters speaking, as Arthur Yap does in his poem about two mothers conversing in a Singapore Housing Board playground. The same equation of language = character applies to dialogue in fiction, and with far greater force in drama.

English is my main language, my foundation language. I won't call it my mother tongue, no, I cannot. I can't even call it my first language because it is not. Teochew is my mother tongue, though I have its upper reaches. But the point is that poets don't choose their language; the language chooses them. In the sense that, by the time you start writing, it too late for you to choose your language. You know the old business of 'What is the language of your dreams?'

N.SCH.: But if you are bilingual, meaning you can make the most out of two languages, maybe you can get more out of your perception of reality?

E.TH.: Possibly, I am not bilingual enough to be certain and can only see the point you make from the outside. Mohd. Haji Salleh, who is now one of the three or four major literary figures in Malaysia, is, in my view, fully bilingual, with Bahasa the language of his mind, spirit, and engagement with life and contacts. I can only say yes, I think so. My bilingual experience is not literary. And though I am able to say something on the perception of reality, I can't on its formulation into literary text.

A second language is another system of vocabulary you bring to bear on the same experience, thought, emotion. But it is not necessarily the same experience, thought or emotion at least initially, because this second system has its own mode of perception and construction. Two over-simplified examples should nail the point down. For the visitor, snow on the landscape is beautiful and possibly dangerous; to the Inuit snow has many names, because understanding it exactly, can be the difference between life and death. And the way we greet, "Salaam" and "Hi" for instance. Comparison of just these two words could lead to a long, and instructive, disquisition on the differences in cultures.

Two observations seem relevant. You respond to an event, a gesture more fully. You then have to decide how its elements, perceived through two language systems, are to emerge as a single perception in one of them. That, perhaps, leads to fresh symbols - as in Ong Teong Hean's poem - and images, rhythms - as in Fadzilah Amin's poem - as part of new life styles, new sensitivities that a multiplicity of languages makes possible.

N.SCH.: Talking about the language policy in Singapore, Kirpal Singh once described English as "a buffer language, a language safe because it is curiously neutral". If that is true, if English does indeed stress the common over the communal, would any potential Singapore classic have to be in English?

E.TH.: No, not necessarily. But likely, because English touches all of Singapore, and therefore takes in its life. It commands the largest area of the common ground you refer to. Our other languages tend to be locked into their ethnicities. They may, I hope, produce classics. But they won't be Singapore classics, but classics of Singapore M-, C-, and I-literatures. We cannot write beyond the possibilities of our perceptions.

N.SCH.: That is more or less a pragmatic answer?

E.TH.: Yes. It seems the best way to respond to your question at this point in time. Developments in the future may well suggest a different answer, when more Singaporeans get into the cultural boxes of fellow citizens.

N.SCH.: Your poem "Language as Power" traces the genesis of the world-wide distribution of the English Language. The notion of power sooner or later brings about the question of the literary canon. What is the present status of Anglo-American Literature and the new English literatures at your university and how do you foresee future developments?

E.TH.: I have always said that ours is a Department of English Language and Literature, in a modern Asian setting that has strong global links, and a clear vision of educational and other priorities. That provides both the philosophy and the agenda. It had to retain a strong English Literature programme, through courses in key areas. When D. J. Enright left in 1969, the Department had a solid English Literature syllabus. I had completed my thesis on African poetry in English under him. My reading had covered fiction, which I was able to include in the course on African Literature. It was the first course in Commonwealth Literature offered by the Department. Asian Literature in translation followed in 1971. Two years later, the Department became one of English Language and Literature. Two courses, in Stylistics, and in Linguistics, had been introduced earlier, in anticipation. As you can imagine, there was some nervousness about the direction of the Department, especially among the expatriates. 1973 was also when modern European drama was reintroduced, together with modern European Literature (both in translation) and modern American Literature.

A fair number of graduates went each year into teaching. They were not equipped to tackle language. But it took a great deal of time and effort to plan and implement a new major, which we did in 1980 with advice and help of John Sinclair from Birmingham. Michael Halliday, our first Language External Examiner, both taught and 'contributed to the development of post-graduate work and research that we planned. Braj Kachru, who is best known for his work on the nativisation of English and other aspects of its adaptation, contributed directly to the broadening of the Department's work.

I am proud to say that we were one of the first universities in the world to teach Commonwealth Literature. A number of doctorates, masters and academic exercises were completed by the late seventies.

N.SCH.: What is the new label? - Is it 'new English literatures'?

E.TH.: No. It is post-colonial. That's not my doing. It is the current label. I preferred new literatures. But as I said earlier, we need specificity, a name, Nigerian E-lit, or Indian E-lit, and so on. That would do nicely for the former non-Anglo-Saxon colonies, among which we should list the Philippines. Even in Canada where French is the other official language, the chances are that when you talk of its literature, it would be assumed to be that in English. For the Anglo-Saxon areas therefore, the position is reversed. The literature in English dominates. It is those in English by the indigenous people that need an identity-name. Yet not for all of them, as in New Zealand, where writers of Maori background are in the mainstream. Labels try to sum up a diverse situation in which serious interest is divided into two sides, the critical and the creative. The critical has an immense establishment, comprising locations as Britain, America, Canada and Australia, and their networks that include European colleagues who tend to take their cue from British practice. The creative consists of that play of language as action, the play of language in action; the E-literatures. The critical tends to look for structures, concepts, definitions and label. Labels serve critical convenience, not the creativity of the E-lits that now girdle the globe, each made unique by its immediate and contextualising histories.

N.SCH.: Looking at Singapore Literature in English, both poetry and short story arguably flourish more than drama, which is a bit of a latecomer. Would you say that this is due to the special working conditions of the theatre, similar to the situations in other regions of the English-speaking world, for example, Australia and Canada where poetry and fiction are ahead?

E.TH.: Again a mixture of reasons. Poetry because you can monitor overall progress from poem to poem; you see the results faster; the creative wrestle is between self, idea/experience, and language, a small but intense arena; it is also closest to that re-making of English to suit the new culture and environment. There are other reasons.

It's like the violin, the queen of instruments, queen of the arts. At least at one time. Moreover, many of the first generation writers were poets. Forty to fifty years ago, before English studies was broadened by large doses of theory and cultural studies, the study of poetry dominated. Of the three genres, it had the greatest continuity; was there before drama; it helped drama get established; it demanded the most complex critical procedures.

There are other reasons. The first extends the point about the suitability of genres, the second about shaping life and contacts into a literature, and a literature whose language, moreover, has a powerful past, and present, elsewhere, but is changing locally. Drama and fiction, the novel especially, are capacious, and demand a lively combination of themes, characters; a slice of life, however conceived, and a range of appropriate narrative strategies. You need a cast of characters who have to be convincing, and whose interaction powers what you want to say. That depends on social and psychological veracity; that, in turn, depends on the veracity of their language. Especially so in drama, where language cannot be artificial, and yet must define the individuality of each character. That is not easy. Although others in the play may discuss them, the characters ultimately define themselves.

The novelist has more means at his disposal for description, of various kinds, and revelation. He can describe states of mind and emotion; move freely in time and place; get his characters into dialogue, subjecting them to authorial comment, if he so wishes, and so on. Is not the language of dramatist and the novelist's dialogue owned, in a sense, by their characters? And what of the poet's? He is the character, the voice, while he is the maker. This is only half the story. Given their equally mixed background, readers have their expectations, their sense of what people are like, both within the precincts of their culture, and across its boundaries to others. How significant is the difference between the way a writer with, say, a Chinese background, develops Chinese and Indian, Malay and Eurasian characters? Readers will respond with a similar mathematics of perception.

N.SCH.: In the poem "Fifteen Years After" which is a personal tribute, you take the example of your teacher Shamus Frazer to illustrate the - should I say - positive aspect of colonialism. Was he the one notable exception?

E.TH.: No; there were others. But he was special. Colonialism was both a force and an institution with many arms. We had some excellent colonial types. Doctors and teachers for instance. I only had an inkling of the British hierarchy: English, public school, Oxbridge first; then Scottish, then provincial universities. This was reflected in the administration, in the schools and, later, at Raffles College, founded in 1929 to offer diplomas in Arts and Science. So within the limitations of the situation, Frazer, an Oxford man, a lover of literature, who had written novels while an undergraduate, who was now into light verse, gave us time, affection, and encouraged those with a talent. He was my literary father to whom my first book of poems was dedicated. He gave me time; invited me to his home; taught me much through close comment on my poems.

There were others, among them K. C. Owen, who sang Welsh patriotic songs. I still wonder if he was trying to tell us something. And half-succeeded, as I used to recall the look in his eyes, the sadness in his voice.

N.SCH.: Not only in terms of years but also with respect to thematic scope, your writing has reflected Singapore's progress towards independence in 1965, and the emergence of a multi-cultural city-state. Judging from hindsight, where would you, as a literary representative, identify the most sign achievements of your state?

E.TH.: To have survived, then prospered, then maintained all-round growth and stability in a continually challenging environment. That is the main, underlying achievement. It rests on a series of interlocking achievements in almost every area of national, community, family and individual welfare. That required the transformation of what had been an entity created and held together by colonialism as a key part of its international and regional network. The first modern Singapore was a British creation; the second, what she is today, the work of the People's Action Party which has governed since 1959. It has been a strong government.

Yours remains a fascinating question. And you rightly refer to achievements. The Singapore experience is complex, at times dramatic. Achievements are the end product. The process leading to them starts earlier. It starts with leaders with vision, integrity, dedication, impartiality, courage, ability and stamina. These are the seven pillars of successful nation-creation, especially in 'Third World' conditions. While this is a personal list, I would imagine it generally reflects what good leaders, and therefore good governments, all have. It is also based on observations of life in other parts of the world I've been privileged to have had, and to the study of E-literatures. Each pillar consists of a number of things. Ability, for instance, includes the capacity to think clearly to analyse problem and issue comprehensively, by breaking them into parts without losing sight of the whole, working out the implications, and to come up with answers, and how to get on with the job. It includes the capacity to prioritise, and to see both the woods and the trees.

What I'd like to do is approach your question through the main heads under which it has been achieved: a pragmatic, honest, impartial, courageous, multi-racial government, which learnt both from its successes and mistakes. That enabled it to secure political stability, economic success through a management that assessed regional and global opportunities and planned strategies that took into account the potential of its citizens to pull them off. At the core was the cooperative participation of government, capital and labour. Government and labour had to work together. How else would foreign capital want to come in to start industries that generated the jobs we needed for a growing population? Capitalist means to produce wealth, and semi-socialist means for its application and distribution. A pragmatic government put specific policies in place to solve particular problems. In this way, it tackled them, layer by layer, area by area. And with considerable forward thinking. For instance, when it was thought that communism could well affect the supply of rice from Thailand, it promoted an eat-more-wheat campaign. To prepare for the time things improve, it spends on upgrading infrastructure during economic downturns. Our government started with little in 1959 when we became self-governing; had to face grave challenges in 1965 when we left Malaysia and turned into a sovereign, independent island republic. I think our most significant achievement really is that we have not only survived, but prospered.

The other thing is managing its multi-racial character. Racial prejudice is virtually universal, almost inevitable. Being of Indian-Chinese parentage, I have thought' than most about race and racism. Racism starts with difference, beginning with physical differences - colour of skin, hair, eyes etc. - extended, often enough, by cultural factors. We need to understand the problem fully in order to deal with it. These are negative factors, negative charges that shock, and repulse. It is what occurs at the point of racial meeting. A far more vital factor, which is positive in the way it acts, though negative in its impact on the racial 'other', is what I would call the 'comfort factor'. Generally speaking, it is not so much disliking the others, as the strong liking for ourselves, secure, relaxed and at home in the comfort of our ethnicity. We are most comfortable with people of our race. We share the same language, share the same icons, share the same understandings, share the same broad thinking, share points of view, and so on. So race is basically a comfort factor. A simplification no doubt, but one worth of further thought.

N.SCH.: Would you like to comment on the system of government in Singapore?

E.TH.: Singapore is a parliamentary democracy, with elections held every five years. Politics is very serious business. You do not mess around with the fate of a people, a nation. While it is the art of the possible, it is also the art of the necessary, a fact not sufficiently recognised. This last statement does not stem from routine needs, but from certain fundamental factors that any sensible government would see as vital, as incontrovertible. For Singapore these include limited land, air space, insufficient water resources, small population, and no natural resources apart from its people. Moreover, she was born into competition, had to grow in it, thrive in it, creating space through such policies as going high tech at home, while going global in search of niche markets. The cash has to be earned. No short cuts.

What does a government do? Evolve immediate, short-, middle-, and long-term plans to deal with problems according to their urgency. Its approach and style is pragmatic: identify a problem or need - better still, anticipate it - and see it in context, then 'get on with it'. Its approach is comprehensive, too much so in the view of some. But at which point does concern stop? Two points are useful here. Experience conditions perceptions. The older generation, who had seen Singapore at risk, with few chips in hand, tends to accept measures that strengthen the common welfare. Not having that experience, the young are inclined, at times, to be sceptical. They want more space. The ultimate judgement is what we are today, as compared to what we were forty years ago. Meritocracy, equal opportunity, impartiality, all as policy and practice, has helped Singapore develop.

N.SCH.: Earlier on you used the collocation 'strong government'. In what sense do you use 'strong'? Is it qualified by or associated with competence or what do you have in mind?

E.TH.: Strong in a sense of not being afraid to take unpopular decisions. You are right to mention competence. To be strong and foolish, to have wrong policies, would be disastrous. No government in the world wants to be unpopular. So, when unpopular decisions are taken, there must be very good reasons for doing so. Our government has a long record of delivering on its promises. The confidence that generates gives it greater leeway.

N.SCH.: In "Grand Uncles" and also in "Evening by Batok Town" you juxtapose the old with the new Singapore. May I ask you whether or not there is anything you miss in the city's contemporary outlook?

E.TH.: Yes, there is. Whether we are aware of it or not, most of us live a great deal out of nostalgia. And familiarity: climate, faces, sounds, taste, roads, suburb and so on. Our sense of continuity depends quite a bit on the physical environment, such as architecture. And a slower pace of life; one that is less centralised. I mean the little shop round the corner, most of which have been replaced by the supermarket. There are pros and cons: one stop shopping, a greater selection of goods, but at the cost of friendly chattiness. The old order yieldeth to the new. But at the same time, while wanting the past, and wanting some of the old things to remain one has to recognise that in Singapore you have to change, to reconfigurate. We are too small a place to preserve what we want. For instance, Coleman's home, or that old building at Radin Mas. My father taught in it when it was part of a school, and I had the run of its grounds when he returned to work during holidays.

I miss these things. I am sure within the planning side of government, there is regret that in some cases we moved too hastily. But change is part of life. You cannot be a modern city-state without modernising.

N.SCH.: Especially so in a fairly restricted area.

E.TH.: Absolutely, absolutely, because of severely limited land. And, you know, what we have to remember arising from what you have just said, a nation has to live within its boundaries. It cannot say, look, I live half here and half somewhere else. You have to live within your boundaries, you got to live there. So given limited land space, you got to start thinking of how to maximise the use of space.

N.SCH.: In one of your most famous poems, "Ulysses by the Merlion ", which belongs to Singapore's emerging canon, you rewrite a visionary myth that for the most part seems to be based on Tennyson's poem and which links Asia with Europe. In what way will this mixed post-colonial legacy shape Singapore's culture in the future?

E.TH.: I think Singapore's culture in the future, like the culture of the future of most affluent English-using countries, is going to be more global. And global culture, like much else, is likely to be America dominated. American culture is going to be the killer culture. Unless, unless, I stress, there is a very strong national tradition in various areas of life. If you have that, then it is less likely to happen. Your own traditions are strong enough to function as a censor, as a sieve. But before such traditions develop, that role in the interim is often taken on by community, religious and other leaders, including, elected representatives. We are not yet in the position of nations with an established culture in situ. The strength of Chinese and Indian culture in China and India will not do much to help the Singaporean. More and more Singaporeans are taking to the English Language. You cannot help it, you want to modernise, that is the way you go. You see, while Germany, France and Holland learning English, you are big enough really to survive without English.

The point is, your cultural risks are far, far, less. If more of us speak each other's language, the world should be a better place. For instance, the conference we are at would surely be impoverished if you, and other German colleagues, did not contribute to what is a very international meeting. English is the main international academic language. It is, by far, the language of international trade, finance, diplomacy, education, technology, the mass media and the internet. Almost every leading paper in the world's other languages has an English edition. It has influenced almost every other culture. So the point of your question, the culture in the end will be a kind of global culture, but whatever happens, there is no such thing as a pure culture, right?

N.SCH.: More or less a patchwork culture.

E.TH.: That's it; indubitably. But where is the balance between the parts? Which parts will dominate? Is there a still point for us in this turning world? I think so, if we look for it. There are new balances, new connections. That we thought together, and conversed, this way this evening, is both positive symptom and happy cause.

N.SCH.: Edwin, thank you very much indeed for this interview.