Poetry
down the line
Arthur Yap · 1980
Synopsis
Arthur Yap's third major collection. It contains one of his most famous poems, 2 mothers in a hdb playground: in the playground of a public housing estate, two mothers chat in Singlish while their sons play, and compare their children's intelligence, their examinations and their future prosperity.
Context
The collection appeared in 1980 from Heinemann Asia, after only lines and commonplace, and received the poetry prize of the National Book Development Council of Singapore. Boey Kim Cheng holds the poem of the two mothers to be the famous example of Yap's ear for the spoken language, and Shirley Geok-lin Lim reads in it a dark critique of family aspirations. The author's collections, out of print, were gathered in 2013 in his Collected Poems, from NUS Press.
Who it is for
For discovering the spoken English of Singapore and its daily life in a collection of poems, without a French translation.
Prizes and reception
Anthony Burgess says he read the collection with exhilaration, and at times with a kind of admiring dread.
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