Confessional

Pleased to see an article on poet Boey Kim Cheng, an interview in fact, placed reasonably prominently in The Straits Times, almost as if poetry actually matters. He's now based in Australia but is at the moment in this Far Place promoting his most recent collection Clear Brightness, which I read with a sense of both profit and enjoyment recently - ironically for the most part when I was in Australia.

But now it's time for a bit of a confession. Clear Brightness wasn't my first exposure to this fine writer. Back in the 90s I bought what I think was his third collection, Days of No Name, being very much aware at the time that he was regarded pretty highly here. That book won the Singapore Literature Prize 1995 Merit award, a fact that I am given to understand may have precipitated his departure from these shores. I guess that anyone winning such a clumsily, and patronisingly, named award might be likely to clear off in embarrassment, but there were voices raised at the time suggesting he really should have won the big award (not sure what they called it, but it went beyond 'merit') and duly miffed he cleared off. Doesn't sound terribly likely, but I suppose it could have been a contributory factor in his migration. But I haven't got to the confession bit yet; mine I mean.

When I read the Days book, which I did sort of fitfully, for some reason I wasn't terribly impressed, to the extent that there were a couple of other 'local' poetry books I bought simultaneously that I much preferred. So Days of No Name languished on my bookshelves until it suddenly occurred to me that after enjoying Clear Brightness so much I really should give it another go. (This was two days ago.) And now I'm wondering what on earth I was thinking a decade and more ago. Am I really that bad a reader? (Well, yes, sometimes. Which is why I do my best to heed the advice I dole out regularly to my students: Don't be in too much of a hurry to make your mind up regarding your response to a work - sometimes the deficiency lies in you.)

The first poem in the collection, almost the title poem, Day of No Name, just blazed off the page for me. What years ago had seemed to me clumsy, meandering and a touch self-regardingly precious, has now become a beautifully modulated exploration of feelings and intimations that lie too deep for words. (That sounds pretentious in a way the poem isn't, by the way.) Just the naming of the poet's companions, which originally struck me as gratingly awkward, now reads as entirely natural with a genuine friendliness that, casual as it is, is essential to the central themes.

I'm also now somewhat painfully aware, as a result of the interview in the paper, that Boey published a collection between the two I own which I completely disregarded, and this despite the fact it's on the 'A' level syllabus for Lit as undertaken in some of the colleges here.

So that's it, all told. My thoughtful judgments, finely honed after years of reading, can turn out to be more than a bit short-sighted. A cautionary tale indeed.