Klein, Ronald. "Edwin Thumboo". Interlogue: Studies in Singapore Literature - Interviews. Vol. 4 Ed. Ronald Klein. Series Ed. Kirpal Singh.  Singapore: Ethos Books, 2000.

Edwin Thumboo interviewed by Ronald Klein
September 1, 1999

RDK:    Let start at the beginning with your family background. Where were your parents from?

ET:       I am of Indian-Chinese parentage. My grandfather came from Madras in the 1880s. He worked in Singapore before taking service under Sultan Abu Bakar of Johore. He retired as a Superintendent of the Public Works Department in Muar. My father was a teacher, and my mother was a housewife with a mixed Teochew-Peranakan background.

RDK:    Where did you grow up?

ET:       My first few years were spent in Mandai which was deep Singapore countryside in the 30s. Mandai Hilt was a major landmark, slightly lower than Bukit Timah. It was there, rising behind our house and very large to a boy. It was of solid granite, but it has been quarried until it is now a hole in the ground. I think it has done service for the nation. It helped pave our roads and was used for housing.

RDK:    What languages were spoken at home?

ET:       My mother tongue was Teochew, which I rather like to call a language rather than a dialect. The fact that linguists call it a dialect suggests the impoverishment of linguistic terms. It is part of a linguistic phenomenon in China where neighbouring languages share a great deal. My father spoke to my mother in English, and when they did not want us to know what they were talking about, in Malay. So we used English and Teochew.

Teochew was my mother tongue but English gradually took over. And here again, I quarrel with the linguists because I like to use the term "main language". English was my main language. I started using it in increasing quantities, on more occasions, as I grew up and went to school. All languages are acquired. Teochew came with growing up in it; English came more formally.

RDK:    In those days, was interracial marriage common?

 ET:      No, it wasn't, and I went through some pretty interesting times because I was mixed. But whenever you have tension arising from a problem of that sort, two things can happen - you either give up or you show you are as good, if not better, than others.

RDK:    You also went to school and learned Japanese during the Occupation.

 ET:      Yes, there was a bit of a disruption. I learned Japanese at an age when the learning was fun. I've made this point before, that the Japanese educational system and educational psychology have one tremendous advantage - they treated us not as children but as young adults.

Of course, the reasons why they did so may be questioned by some. They probably wanted us to grow up into young people as soon as possible. It was only after the war that I realised they schooled us the same way they schooled Japanese children, so some of the games we played were pretty tough. But as far as I was concerned, it was fun.

The Japanese Occupation was significant in many ways. It brought experience of many kinds into one's life and much earlier than it would otherwise have been. We also saw the nature of power, of difference, of the other.

RDK:    How did you see this?

 ET:      You felt it. If you had to go by a sentry, you had to stop and bow. They would shout and tweak your ears if you did not or if you appeared slow or reluctant. It was something we never did before. He had power; he was different.

If you are half-Indian and half-Chinese, the sense of the other, the sense of being different, is an extra part of your perception of things. We tend to think that many things are part of adult sensibility. We tend to underrate what a kid knows. We tend to see children from the point of view of ourselves as adults.

RDK:    As a child, what was your perception of the Japanese Occupation?

ET:       I knew something was wrong because the adults weren't too happy. But like all adults, they protected us. They tried to preserve as much of our childhood as possible. So there were moments of fun and games. And quite often, we were drawn into more adult activities which we wouldn't have got involved in if the war hadn't come. I wouldn't have sold cakes in the streets or worked as a sales boy in Yarl Store along >North Bridge Road.

RDK:    Did your family suffer much during this time?

ET:       No, we were relatively well-off. Father earned a modest salary as a teacher. Our Chinese relatives, the uncles who lived in Minto Road, with bakau and charcoaL kilns in the Riau islands, supplied us with rice, sugar and other essentials whenever they came into a supply. We had less than we had before, but I don't think many Singaporeans died of starvation.

There was beriberi all around and the Javanese labourers brought here late in the Occupation starved. They had no families. It was tough for the adults but not for the kids. And at times, like at dinner, you could see the layers of affection. Mama gave the best portion of the food to Papa because he had to go out to work. But Papa set it aside for the children.

RDK:    What happened to you after the war?

ET:       When the war finished, I didn't go back to school immediately because I had been selling cakes, planting vegetables and looking after goats, where there was an element of responsibility. But the responsibility was almost fun. I was 12 in 1945. I think I went back to school in 1946 - reluctantly.

I remember my first geography test. I didn't realise it had to be written. So when the teacher said, "We're going to have a test," the rest of the class was busy bringing out their coloured pencils. And here was myself saying, "Why isn't he asking us questions, row by row?"

RDK:    What schools did you go to?

ET:       I had started studying at Pasir Panjang Primary School, where my father taught, in 1940. During the Occupation, it was Tanglin Tinggi, off Winsted Road, and at the old ACS building on Cairnhill. I spent 1946 - 1947 at Monks' Hill, five minutes from my home in Monks' Hill Terrace. After that, I went to Victoria School in 1948.

I took my School Certificate in 1951 and stayed on till 1953 in the Post-School Certificate Class. Then I went to the University of Malaya in Singapore.

Early influences

RDK:    How did you get started in writing?

ET:       In 1950, I met James Fraser, who was definitely the most important Literary influence I had, whose help and encouragement were crucial., Without him, I may not have gone on in English. I was a good science student, especially in chemistry, and school life had far less pressure in those days. You were able to discover and pursue many interests. It was around 1949 - 1950 that I started to write verses. One of my teachers must have shown some of them to Fraser, and he started taking an interest.

James Ian Arbothnot Fraser was a Scotsman born in Devon. What was marvellous about Fraser was his warmth, his generosity, his giving. The colonial educational system wasn't meant to liberate but to produce digits - people of a certain kind, certain numbers in certain occupations. Given the basic assumptions of the system, it was a solid education. But Fraser was important to me.

RDK:    How did he encourage your work?

 ET:      He mentored me. But that word, while it existed, was never used for literary purposes. It is not as if we could really mentor creative writing.

I teach creative writing, and I tell the young writers that apart from the occasional gift of a word, image or metaphor, my role is to put useful information in their way in two forms. First, by providing information about poetry which may help them write their poems and second, by offering some quick, decent criticism.

RDK:    Who else influenced you?

ET:       Before I went to university, I met people like Wang Gung-wu, Beda Lim, Lim Thean Soo, and Goh Sin Tub who ran a poetry circle for Youth, a magazine with an editorial board drawn from the leading secondary schools. Fraser was useful all round in helping me find style and in being sympathetically critical. But Sin Tub helped us make connections between poetry and life here in a way that Fraser couldn't. It wasn't his fault. This was Sin Tub's home country. No doubt we were a colony, but we had a distinct middle-class and English-educated way of life.

RDK:    Were there other teachers or writers whom you were associated with?

ET:       There was Mr. E. Jesudason, a teacher from Raffles Institution. He and Fraser showed us the sound of words, the importance of rhythm and pattern and regularity, and line management. He loved Keats, often reciting him with passion. He didn't write; Sin Tub did. Beda Urn, who died recently, was a very good critic. He was quick, alert, and sensitive to the possibilities of what you were trying to do. He gave the impression of talking to you, gently, about the poem as he probed the use of this word, the length of that line and so on. You know, whenever you have a new group emerging, moved perhaps by the beginnings of literary consciousness and touched by nationalism, you would find those who would like to write and those who are the critics explaining the spirit of the movement. Beda served that function.

So we had Gung-wu, Sin Tub, Thean Soo and Beda, and others Like James Puthucheary and James Peter Chin, for instance. To call them a group may misrepresent what was happening then. They were kindred spirits who used to spend time together and talk about common problems of writing poetry.

RDK:    What about influences at university?

ET:       I met Patrick Anderson, the man who wrote Snake Wine, an interesting book, although he had left by the time I went up. He was slightly helpful to me, but I think he was especially good for young adults. He was a very exciting person in the way he gave his opinions, and analysed and commented on things. His lectures on D. H. Lawrence were so interesting that Medical and Science students attended them. In my time, we had Ee Tiang Hong, Wong Phui Nam, Tan Han Hoe, and a few others.

I met others, mainly lecturers who had an interest in our interests--Anthony Price, Eric Mottram, and Alan Painter, who had a starred Double First, never looked at my poems but taught much through his Practical Criticism classes. A very reticent person, his lectures were, to my mind, brilliant. He helped you to think, gave you ways and means, and the confidence to tackle a poem seen for the first time. And one piece of his advice has stayed with me; he said that you should read a play or novel as carefully as you would a poem. That is how I came to see that everything is language.

The other person directly interested in the developing literary scene was C. J. Francis, a young lecturer who came from Manchester. He was good. And of course, there was Ellis Evans, a senior person in the department. His analysis and comments on poetry were tremendous.

And of course, at university, there were those who were discouraging. The less said about them the better.

RDK:    Are you about influences in your early days studying literature or writing poems?

ET:       It would be hard for me to draw a distinction. If you are a student of literature and you write, there's no distinction to be drawn. It's the same mind, the same spirit. It's the same person, engaged in different activities which are related, alt occurring in the same mind.

RDK:    In your university days, you were a member of an anti-colonial political organisation. Didn't that get you into a bit of trouble?

ET:       Now when you say "anti-" something, you can say you are working "for" something else. Put whichever way, there will always be another way of saying it. Yes, I was on the editorial board of Fajar, published by the Socialist Club. We met irregularly, but my function was really just to do the proofreading. The discussions were interesting, though. The seniors knew their stuff.

RDK:    But you were, let's use the term, "pro-nationalistic".

ET:       Put it this way, I don't want to sound heroic and tremendously self-informed about the political agenda, I was involved in Fajar. Of course, we wanted independence. Who didn't want it? But my interest was literary and getting the proofs done.

The elders, people Like James Puthuchear Poh Soo Kai, Raja Kumar, they were the ones who moved politically and who had a greater sense of socialist doctrine.

It was the experience that helped define the moment for me. I became a little rebellious and questioned more. Why was the history we learnt almost all about European expansion overseas, chiefly in Asia?

By the way, they arrested us during exams. But why should they be polite about it? Anyway, after that, I became good friends with the person who came to arrest me. Why not? You know you can be civilized about these things.

RDK:    You were arrested, but not jailed.

ET:      We were not jailed because Sir Sidney Caine, who was Vice- Chancellor then, posted bait. There was this lovely little rule, part of the anthropology of good government and academic respect. The police couldn't get on the campus without the Vice Chancellor's permission. Of course, it was the kind of. permission the Vice Chancellor couldn't refuse to give, but they had to ask. So the Vice Chancellor was fully aware of what was about to happen.

RDK:    What was the specific event that led to the arrest?

ET:       Some of the articles in Fajar were thought subversive, anti-British, but nothing particularly savaging. But it was part of colonial strategy to scare blokes off, to shake them up a bit.

ROK:    Was it a question that anything anti-British was seen to be pro-Communist?

ET:       It was not as simplistic as that, but there was enough. If you were anti-establishment and the Communists were anti-establishment, there was always enough presumption, reasonable or not, that there was some connection. And both Communists and Socialists were influenced by Marx's ideas.

RDK:    What about nationalists?

ET:       Nationalists, no. Nationalists were influenced by Nehru and Gandhi. But what happened in China, you know, the re established integrity of the Motherland? The Kuomintang never had any integrity. The Kuomintang were corrupt warlords. I'm not saying the Communists weren't, but it was the Communists who recovered the integrity of the Motherland. They were Nationalists in their own way.

Domesticating English

RDK:    In your university days, what literary traditions were you following? I assume you read the traditional canon and wrote accordingly.

 ET:      Yes, you learn a great deal from imitation, but literary progression is to cease imitating. And there is a link between what you study and how you write. If a would-be poet goes through a solid dose of 18th century poetry, he probably went for heroic couplets. And the same for the Metaphysicals, though they were much harder to follow. And if they went through a solid dose of Eliot, you know what happens. We inherited the English Language, and we have paid for it. Inheritance sounds nice but it is important when it comes to asking, "Whose language is this?"

RDK:    Isn't there always a tension?

ET:       It never stops, at least not before you feet you have a decent style. Let me answer this way. You start off writing not as an extension of the literature you learned but as a complement of the literature you learned. The difference is vital; it depends on how you look at language.

On one hand, I look at language as part of the literature I am studying. It is a critical, exegetical exercise. I enter the text as best as I can, attentive to what the writer has done. On the other, I'm looking at language as part of my life. I am trying to create, to make my poems, putting language together.

RDK:    Can you explain this distinction in your writing?

ET:       When I'm asked how conscious am I of language when I write, I say it depends on time, place and stage of poem. Sometimes, I'm not even conscious of what's happening. I'm trying to get something out. There isn't a single way of composing. You can actually find yourself in language. You can gradually shake off the influences, though this can be tough.

In my case, the major influence was Yeats. Eliot, too, to some extent, but Eliot was of the mind, more often than not, cerebral. And if it is of the mind, the mind can resist it. You can rationalize; you can invent a verbal formula. But when it comes from within, like Yeats, more instinctive but artful nonetheless, it is less easily displaced, harder to shed. The influence is harder to analyse. And if it is hard to analyse, it is even harder to find an antidote, a way of release.

RDK:    Do you see yourself as Singapore's Yeats?

ET:       No, but your question is useful and important. It makes me think about influence, and how to cope with it. At moments though, I feet it is easier to find your own voice if your poetry is set at home. The language of your poems has its breath here. You have your characteristic vocabulary, your symbols, your turns of phrase, your particular kinds of punctuation, all shaping the pace at which you develop an idea or truncate it. But these things are less conscious than what I just said would suggest.

RDK:    What does it mean to find your own voice?

ET:       You gradually pick up your own rhythm, your own voice in the sense that there's more of your self in it. First, there is more of an enlarged self as you grow up. The self can no longer be contained, be satisfied, in a little box. We get out of the box, but when we reach the limits of that freedom, we find we are in another box. When you stop getting out, opting to stay, it is stagnation. The process goes on. That keeps language alive because more of you gets reflected in it. We can listen to Churchill talk and say it's Churchillian, and we know exactly what we mean by that. So you develop your linguistic oddities and quirks.

RDK:    So have you developed your quirks?

ET:      We all have some. You don't do so deliberately. They are for others to spot. If I spot one, I try to remove it. Put it this way, it is like diabetes, which is not "what" but "when". When do we say this is diabetes because sugar tolerance has been reduced? When does something become quirky? It is a process, not a sudden discovery. How much of it must be there before you say it has happened? One has to take an arbitrary decision. You know it begins to happen slowly, and then you develop characteristic rhythms.

RDK:    You are talking about the formation of style. Doesn't it take a prolonged and consistent effort to develop your own style?

ET:       That is another very important factor. The time I spent on thinking about poetry, doing poetry, risking poetry has gotten less through the years, and this is my great sadness. Hopefully, I'll get the time to think about poetry, have the time and the mood to write. Some of the phrases are coming back and it comes from the Muse.

RDK:    You mean your Muse is coming back?

ET:       Put it this way, the Muse never deserts you; it is always there. My Muse didn't desert me. It's a nasty necessity to make compromises in life. Your career and advancement are important from one point of view but deadening from another.

I have my regrets. All of us have. If I had the choice, I wouldn't have written any criticism except that criticism which only poets can write. And poets should not write anything else, in my view, if they want to be true to their vocation. Like what Robert Graves said, "I write poems for poets." I'd write criticism, just for poets; it comes with the profession.

RDK:    Continuing from those days which led to the publication of Rib of Earth in 1956, you wrote, "I am writing in English but not in England." You said you had to domesticate English.

ET:       Yes. I meant that the social, emotional, intellectual and historical matrix that a writer is enmeshed in is different. My experience is different. You studied English literature, you knew its lineage, you knew its muscle and sinew. And you could see it is a great literature. You enjoyed it. But at the same time, you knew that except in the most universal terms, that it was not us. The details of an experience differed; they shared a basis only when treated as universal.

RDK:    So how does one domesticate English?

ET:       Very simple; yet challengingly difficult. You use it with your own intonation, your own way of speaking, your own way of naming. You give it your own force. Any writer not born into the language, with access to its full storehouse, must work to create his own from his life and contacts, the history and substance of his society.

Derek Walcott, in "A Dream on Monkey Mountain", says the same thing. Walcott had a far bigger problem than us because he only had one language, one culture. There weren't any alternatives. His challenge was to make something marvellous out of a residue. Caribbean writers had to find their own dialect; they had to construct their own meaning and naming, and they had to take their own experience seriously. They had to find their own centre so as to construct their self- image. They had to do these things and that is not easy.

RDK:    And can English be shaped in such diverse settings?

ET:       When you talk about English, you are talking about the accumulation of a tremendous quantity of human experience, and more than that, you are talking about a tremendous range of contemporary world experience. There is a greater variety of experience being lived in English, from cross-cultural directions, fertilised by other linguistic traditions and other artistic traditions, than any other language in history.

Four recent winners of the Nobel Prize who wrote in English were not from England or America - Soyinka from Nigeria, Gordimer from South Africa, Walcott from the Caribbean, and Heaney. These four are not from the centre. And you see how diverse they are in terms of their background and work. We can talk about the problems of the Nobel but these are major writers by any standard.

RDK:    And did all these writers have to domesticate English?

ET:       Now, there are two standards here. One is the outsider judging, reading it. He won't find it to the extent that I find it because he sees the distance between that English and the English he knows. For me, I see the distance between the English I could have gotten into and the English I'm using. And that's the true position, believe me. I see what I could have written.

RDK:    But you tell your students that they must work beyond imitation to find their own voices.

ET:       Fair enough. But you show me a wholly original poet. You see, I thought the language of literature was the highest form of the English language. But now what has happened in the past 20 years has been the democratisation of language. And I really lament this loosening of the language, so that a lot of what passes for poetry now I would say is undigested, insufficiently taut.

For me, the language of poetry has to be taut, has to be intense and has to ring. I've not always been successful but that is another matter. But this is what it should be. You think you read a poem and exhaust it, but no. If you ask me on what basis do I judge, I would say it is the instruction provided by my own reading. That rests on the formal study of literary analysis. Others would have their bases.

RDK:    But it's not just a question of the writer, but also of the reader. Some poetry is more accessible to a wider audience.

ET:       I agree with you. You need less work to do it.

On Writing

RDK:    From Rib of Earth to Gods Can Die, how did your writing change or develop?

ET:       That is difficult for me to answer. I could see certain changes in my style but that is for the critics to say. For me, my themes have moved. Somewhere between, I felt that poetry had a function. At that time, I felt that poetry had to communicate to some extent.

I felt these are two voices or two kinds of poetry - the public and the private. Now, having made that formulation for myself, those who have read my poetry have latched on to it. But they have simplified it. For me, it was an operational mode, not a statement of doctrine as such. But the critics made it into a doctrine.

And I'm partly responsible for that. If you are living in a place like Singapore with so much going on, how can you escape writing about them? So I wrote various poems, including some which I tried to blend two interests. When you blend two interests, people think you're blending two styles, and that is not always right. I have my own opinion but let's let the critics talk about it.

RDK:    It seems that as you progressed in your writing, your poems became more accessible.

ET:       Yes, but I have moments of regret though. Not because I want to write something obscure, but because I've not been able to put more layers into the language. It is a kind of compromise a poet shouldn't make.

RDK:    But at some point when you write a poem, you say, "I am finished." If you had more time or energy, you wouldn't stop, would you?

ET:       That's it! That's where you compromise. What one should not do is to stop and say this is my present limit. Not to say, "Look, I'm tired." But this is what happens. Maybe I should chuck out all my administrative things now and get back to poetry, because what keeps me alive is knowing that I can still come up with a powerful phrase or line.

I have rendered too much unto Caesar. Work took time away, and as a poet, work and time go together. And it's not so much the time problem here. Your best energy, nervous energy used for the resolution of problems, should really go into poetry. Instead it goes into administration. It's the same energy. I know the old mint is still there, a little shaky perhaps, but still working.

RDK:    Enough to regain the same tautness of your earlier works? We are talking of about a span of writing stretching 45 years!

ET:       I cannot say. It may be something different. And we think of tautness realty as something overtextured. Someone like Robert Frost is absolutely taut and absolutely open at the same time. So I want to go for tautness. I think Auden does it sometimes, as in "Lullaby' It is a simple poem, but looking more often at it as I get older, I see it differently.

RDK:    In making your poetry more accessible, aren't you releasing the tautness, relaxing your personal domestication of the language? Isn't this a contradiction?

ET:       No, it is not a contradiction. Remember what I said about domesticating? I made the point that I am domesticating for myself. I'm not domesticating the language for the world. And remember the other point I made, that you don't know what I could have written and what I moved away from.

RDK:    In Gods Can Die, you revised several poems and published them again. Why?

ET:       Well, obviously, I republished these poems and those sections that I liked. Why not? Robert Graves used to do it, and others have done it. Yeats was constantly revising. It is a minor point as far as I'm concerned. Now if I had republished alt of them, it would be a different matter. And just remember, Rib of Earth had been out of print and for a very long time, inaccessible.

RDK:    In Gods Can Die, one of my favourite poems is "A Boy Drowns".

ET:       Which is one of my favourites, too, really. You see, I have always had a very strong interest in Japan. I had a Japanese step-grandmother. We called her Makcik, Auntie. She used to visit regularly from Nagasaki. I was about four to five years old but I remember her red kimono. I remember her hair, the pins; I remember the sound of the kimono and I remember her socks, and how she bent down with her palms holding down her kimono as she talked to me. Judging from that one episode, which I remember more in terms of colour than actual conversation, she was very gentle and gave me the kind of attention that was more total than what the others would have given me.

RDK:    Someone said that you have written some of the finest love poems anywhere. Why haven't you written more?

ET:       Love poetry is the hardest thing to write and then, at the same time, the easiest. And I may come back, but it'll be different. And you know what is interesting is this, it'll be the older people who will see that they are love poems. The discourse of love changes in many ways.

RDK:    Ee Tiang Hang's book about your work is called Responsibility and Commitment - to self or to society?

ET:       To both, and most importantly, to the art. I have neglected that commitment to the art. The art for me means technique, which is vital. Technique is the eternity of poetry, really.

RDK:    What do you mean by that?

ET:       We read the great poets because they've achieved something, and their achievement is technique - the making, and I use that old-fashioned word that can cross the centuries. That's why Dunbar wrote that poem, "Lament for the Makers".

The making is very important. It is what releases the poem into a form of immortality; it is the chiselling of Language, the rearranging of language, the sound, the rhythm, the tautness, the layering. They all have to be there. The challenge really is that what comes in small doses should be throughout the poem and should not be scattered.

But for many of us, for example in "A Boy Drowns", it is scattered. There are some lines which are terrific, if I say so myself, but I wish there were more like that. But on the other hand, in a poem of that length and with that intent, is it ever possible? I do not have the stamina or the gift. And there are questions the critics wish to ask. But is it desirable to have a kind of unending intensity? I wish I could have done it alt intensely and then said, "Now let me remove this or that line, this or that phrase."

RDK:    But the writer can take out before it goes to the publishers.

ET:       You can, you can, but you see, by taking out, you are saying something. But the reaL work is, if you leave it there, you lower the pressure by other lines. But here we're talking about actual work. I believe ultimately, there are things a critic, if not a poet, will not see.

RDK:    But a poet writing a poem has his own intention.

ET:       Yes, and the criticism that removes the intention is a bit silly. Some people said that intention does not count. Who says so? It counts from the word go. Yes, all the intention led to the seamless thing which has its own intention, which hopefully you might have started with. Or, occasionally, it turns out to be different but equally important, if not more important.

RDK:    So are you saying responsibility to self?

ET:       And to the art, the technique and everything that goes with literature - the responsibility of the writer. I tell my students, "Make this poem the best poem you can at this moment. You should write at your limit, then try to go beyond that limit."

Post-colonial/Singapore Literature

RDK:    You've been active in the Commonwealth/post-colonial literature movement.

ET:       I don't like the term "post-colonial literature". I think it is inaccurate, if not nasty. I made the point at one conference in England. I asked, "Are you post-Roman? How long do you want us to be "post-British"? Why should we tie all of our subsequent experience to you folks?" And then the bloke saw the point.

RDK:    So what is your preferred term?

ET:       That is the problem. We want a convenient, single term. My preferred solution is "Nigerian literature in English", or "Indian literature in English' There is accuracy. When we read Nigerian or Indian works, we are prepared for the literatures to be different. We think immediately of different histories, terrain, religious practices, literary forms, and so on. Even "West Indian Literature in English" would be grossly generalising. How much more is "post-colonial"? But it is not likely to take, as it will be seen as cumbersome. In the meanwhile, I use "New Literatures in English". It's a phrase I've used, but I'm still uncomfortable with it.

RDK:    And "Singapore literature in English"?

ET:       Or we can just say "Singapore literature" and the assumption should be made that it is in English.

RDK:    Really? I know some people who would not make that assumption.

ET:       You have a point. I'll tell you why I say so. I wouldn't call it "Nigerian literature in Ebo". I'd call it "Ebo literature". It is only literature in English at the moment which deals with the broad Singapore experience. How many novels in Chinese or Bahasa cut across cultural boundaries, have multi-racial characters, as part of the structure?

Let's come back to "post-colonial' The term has a very specific meaning. And it refers to that period in the history of a country immediately following colonialism; and the period would vary in length from place to place, depending on what the colonialism was like. In this sense, there is "post-colonial literature", usually written by or about folks who lived just after colonialism, or by a writer who goes back to the partition in India or to what happened in Ghana when Nkruma was President.

RDK:    So how long was Singapore's post-colonial period?

ET:     Again, when we say post-colonial, we have to be careful. Are we talking about the politics, the economics or the literature? We have to split the thing.

RDK:    I'm asking about literature. Was there a post-colonial period?

ET:       Again, this is arbitrary, like diabetes. You don't have a precise chemical reaction to prove this or that. I would say the post- colonial period would be between the mid-50s and 1965. I'm talking about both the spirit and the politics as it felt like to my generation. That is when we became a sovereign nation, with no option but to move forward. There was a moment, I think it was 1973, with the closure of the bases. When Wilson decided to pull the Armed Forces out, it meant much less cash pumped into the economy.

But if you think in terms of psychological independence, some people are still post-colonial. So again, it ultimately depends on the individual.

RDK:    Has Singapore literature hit its stride, formed its own voice? Has it become a national literature?

ET:       These are very difficult questions to answer, realty. At which stage do we say this is a national literature? Because a national literature requires two factors to be fulfilled. First, it is quantity, and second, the strength of that quantity.

RDK:    You said that around 1975 there was a post-colonial phase that gave way to national identity.

ET:       For me, it was in national life, not necessarily in literature. Literature comes more often after that life, not before. Yes, the life develops, and the literature follows the life. The distinction is between nationalistic literature and national literature.

RDK:    To an outsider looking at Singapore literature, there seems to be a progression from poetry in the 60s - 70s to short stories in the 70s - 80s and then novels. And nowadays, there seems to be a new swing to poetry.

ET:       Yes, that's right, that is a marvellous surprise for me. But I predicted this curve long ago. I said first poetry, then the short stories, then the fiction and the drama. But I didn't expect any to stop.

The fact that young writers did not take to poetry merely suggests that the talent went elsewhere. And now, most of the talent is going into poetry. There is a very small base here. You can say there are many young poets, but show me the young fictionists. Not the same number.

RDK:    People say poets write because they have something personal they want to express. Fiction writers write to tell their stories and because there was a market opening to them.

ET:       No, they really had something to say too. The market may have been a factor, fair enough. So, well, it's good that more poetry is being written. I think we write more, and less self-consciously, about ourselves now. That is an important development.

In that sense, it is natural. It is us, and it is inevitable because they are writing about themselves now. This is why I say you cannot use the term "post-colonial". The colonial period is not even part of their experience. They know little of it.

RDK:    But they are writing in a different milieu from when you started writing.

ET:       Yes. The last 30 years and more have seen Singapore change in all areas of life. The list is impressive and massive. It has to be a different milieu. But I see what was there before, and before that. And perhaps more importantly, they are a different generation.

But what is missing in their experience, and this is not their fault, is the cumulative perspective on life - knowledge of our history, the struggle, the "ifs" of events turning this way rather than that.

Because the nation succeeded, they are deprived of some really interesting experiences, like the uncertainties, the tensions. I'm glad they are being spared that, but at the same time, I regret it. We are becoming part of the global village all too rapidly, and this means that we are international in terms of contact and exposure, without having had the time to be national.

RDK:    In your years as a teacher and administrator, you must have had contact with hundreds of young writers. How did you encourage them?

ET:       In a number of ways. First of all, my writing has suffered, obviously, but that is not the point. As an administrator, by being there, I have mentored young people. I have chats with them. I look at their poems. I have taught a creative writing course for about four years now.

I spend a lot of time discovering where their strengths are, and help cultivate them. I encourage them to be themselves. I say, "What word do you want here? There are words I can think of but you have to decide." And they see it quite fast. But my rule is this: I don't want to produce clones.

So I may have helped through courses, through work at the Centre for the Arts, through setting up writers-in- residence schemes, through some of the work I did in the Writers Week which I set up way back with Wong Yoon Wah, Masuri, Liew Chin Choy, Elangovan arid others.

RDK:    Do you feel like a Godfather?

ET:       No, not at all. You just see young people and you tell yourself, "Look, life is going on and it's good." There must be young people coming up. There must be a succession. Put it this way, unlike biological lineage, literary Lineage is for others to establish. You don't go around establishing it. I can say I have helped certain people, they know who they are, but they were also helped by others.

And let's not forget, they have been helped by the greatest Godfather of all - the literature itself that has been produced in the English language over time. This is a great source of instruction and inspiration that's got to be seen in perspective. And the wealth of American and the "New Literatures". But remember that writers make themselves; we don't make writers.

RDK: Sometimes the public does.

ET:      Sometimes, it does, but that's a separate thing. But then the next question to ask is, "Are these critics all writers?" This is a half-fair question, and it is for others to answer. You see the greatest critic, the one you can't corrupt, is time.

RDK: You've been described as the unofficial Poet Laureate of Singapore. Can you accept that?

ET     : Those who do so mean well. They include some whom I much respect. It makes me happy because part of my intention is to have a function, to have a purpose. And in a way, it is also recognition of a place for poetry in a society, and this is important. And someday when I'm dead, I hope someone else is hailed as Laureate.

RDK: Well, the function of the Poet Laureate is to trot out poems for special occasions. Do you do that?

ET:      No, I don't. But I write about what I think are special occasions for me. And the other people may feel they are special occasions. You see, literature as part of culture is very hard for a government in a multi-racial society to encourage officially. It is a difficult-to-win situation. For instance, too much patronage, however carefully managed, will be seen by some as indirect censorship.

RDK: And what about the future? How much longer are you going to keep working?

ET:     Interesting question. The Centre for the Arts is really enlarged now, and fortunately, the Vice-Chancellor has allowed us to have a very good general manager to take charge. So hopefully I can just give ideas, concentrate on development and major programmes, and oversee things, etc. That should give me more time for academic and creative work.

The ideal for me would be to retire from administration and go into full-time teaching and research, and to write up material awaiting attention. Apart from three years of my university life, I haven't had the pleasure of doing nothing but teach. I was hoping that my last two to three years here could be spent doing nothing but teaching and writing.

I have just spent some time as a visiting professor at the University of Illinois. I was there for two months and I talked on hybridity, diaspora literature and related matters. The main theses need to be expanded and supporting arguments tested and refined. That's what I hope to do. And I want to spend time with my grandchildren, who at the moment are miles away.

RDK: OK, thank you. I appreciate your spending these hours with me.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

1993     A Third Map: New and Selected Poems        Singapore: UniPress

1979     Ulysses by the Melion                                   Singapore: Heinemann Educational Books

1977     Gods Can Die                                                Singapore: Heinemann Educational Books

1956     A Rib of Earth                                                Singapore: L. Fernando