Photo: Stephen Black (2009)


CYRIL WONG has been called Singapore's first confessional poet with "many styles, all of them limber, which combine the anecdotal and the confessional with the intuitive and the empathetic" (Patke and Holden 185). Author of nine volumes of poetry and a collection of strange tales, his poems are known for their "lyrical intensity" and for "training an almost anthropologically curious eye on the laws and customs of his own family: their strange taciturn ways, their gnomic references to disappointment and guilt, and their penchant for self-delusion" (Holden, Poon, Lim 370). In a way that makes him particularly distinctive in the Singaporean literary scene, his poetic orbit possesses "a heightened awareness of the physical body, and a desire to probe its visceral materiality for emotional truths" (Holden, Poon and Lim 370-71). Edwin Thumboo has praised Cyril's poems for their "remarkable inwardness" and how "they leave us with the feeling of subjects — occasion, non-happening, an especially poignant experience — explored to unusual limits" ("Introduction" 9). With regards to Cyril's third collection and its play of presence and absence in the context of Singapore's urbanity and cultural memory, John Phillips described his poetry as offering "an affirmation of emptiness in a time and place where this is barely possible" ("The Future of the Past: Archiving Singapore" 160).

Cyril is popularly known as a homosexual poet — "a condition about which he has written much and of which he takes complete and total ownership; that is, he refuses to blame this on biology or some other mis-alignment, taking, rather, full responsibiliy for being gay by choice" (Singh 108). TIME magazine (Dec. 10, 2007) has also written that "his work expands beyond simple sexuality...to embrace themes of love, alienation and human relationships of all kinds" (Tharoor 48). Singaporean critic Gwee Li Sui has stressed that readers need not perceive the poet's persona in terms of gay exceptionality, "his qualities of spaciousness and morphing images also manifesting an interest in a kind of New-Age irreligious spirituality" ("The New Poetry" 250). In a review by the Southeast Asian Review of English, Cyril's poetry was called "an art that works simply from a personal plane, and from within such a plane we have some of the most sensitive, articulate probings into the nature of one's self that have never been seen before in all of contemporary Singaporean verse" (Jeyam 99).

Cyril has been a featured poet at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Hong Kong International Literary Festival, the Sydney and Melbourne Writers Festivals, Vietnam's first Asia-Pacific Poetry Festival, the Utan Kayu International Literary Biennale, Ubud Readers and Writers Festival, and the Singapore Writers Festival. Theatre companies, dancers and musicians have adapted his work for the stage. A selection of his poems was performed at the 2004 Queensland Poetry Festival. He was a creative writing mentor under the Creative Arts Programme and the Mentor Access Project, as well as a judge for the Golden Point Awards for English Poetry in Singapore. His works have appeared in Atlanta Review, Fulcrum, Poetry International, Poetry New Zealand, Kunapipi, Ideya, Asymptote, Asia Literary Review and Die Horen (German Translation), among various journals and magazines. Anthologies featuring his work include Collective Brightness (Sibling Rivalry Press 2011), ALIA storie — l'arcipelago del fantastico (CS_libri 2011), GASPP (The Literary Centre 2010), Tumasik (AHB & IWP 2009), Double Skin (Ethos 2009), Fifty on 50 (NAC 2009), Writing Singapore: An Historical Anthology of Singapore Literature (NUS Press 2009), Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia and Beyond (W. W. Norton 2008), Chinese Erotic Poems (Everyman's Library 2007), Singapore: Sedici racconti dall'Asia estrema (Isbn Edizioni 2005) and Dance the Guns to Silence (Flipped Eye Publishing 2005).

A past recipient of the National Arts Council's Young Artist Award (2005) and the Singapore Literature Prize (2006), Cyril is completing a doctoral degree in English literature at the National University of Singapore under a Research Scholarship, and edits the poetry journal, SOFTBLOW.




R E F E R E N C E S

Gwee Li Sui, ed. "The New Poetry of Singapore." Sharing Borders: Studies in Contemporary Singaporean-Malaysian Literature II. Singapore: NLB/NAC 2009.

Holden, Philip, Angelia Poon and Shirley Geok-lin Lim, eds. "Section 2 (1965-1990): Introduction." Writing Singapore: An Historical Anthology of Singapore Literature. Singapore: NUS Press/NAC, 2009.

Jeyam, Leonard. "The Poetry of Personal Revelation: Reviewing Cyril Wong's Unmarked Treasure." Southeast Asian Review of English. No. 47 Apr. 2006/07.

Patke, Rajeev S. and Philip Holden. "Contemporary poetry 1990-2008." The Routledge Concise History of Southeast Asian Writing in English. New York: Taylor & Francis, 2010.

Phillips, John. "The Future of the Past: Archiving Singapore." Urban Memory: History and Amnesia in the Modern City. Ed. Mark Crinson. London and New York: Routledge, 2005.

Singh, Kirpal. "Poetic Meditations: Two Singaporean Poets and a Personal Reflection." Kunapipi. Vol. XXXII No. 1-2 Dec. 2010.

Tharoor, Ishaan. "Merlion Heart." TIME (Asia Edition). Dec. 10, 2007.

Thumboo, Edwin. "Introduction." Squatting Quietly. By Cyril Wong. Singapore: Firstfruits, 2000.

Email: cyrilsingstheblues[at]gmail.com