Interview+with+the+poets

Before me sit two literary giants from different worlds: one from Canada and the other from Singapore. Though they might come from different corners of the world, Atwood and Cheng are united by a common concern: the rapid advancement of industrial planning and the ironic state of humans who have become zombies in the face of consumer culture and living in the ‘perfect’ residential areas without a second thought to the consequences of their actions. **Interviewer: Both of you have created powerful poems, which almost seem prophetic in the light of the collapse of the world economy, especially since it was triggered by the collapse of the real estate sector. What was your motivation for writing your respective poems, //The City Planners// and //The Planners//? Were there personal influences from your backgrounds and upbringings?** MA: Yes. I have very strong views on environmental issues and I see myself as a naturist. I tried to implicitly give my point of view in the poem. The city planners feel that they have the right to destroy beautiful woodland and greenery just to quench their thirst for greed. In my opinion, they really do have their minds on nothing but money and wealth. ‘City Planners with the insane faces of political conspirators’ shows how I feel about them. They are all aiming to sella broken image. My background has been very in touch with nature and I wish to keep it that way.
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BKC: Well actually, my early life was spent in disgust of the political state of Singapore, everything was so uniform and planned! In an island limited for space I understand the need for order but it was getting out of hand. The greed behind the buildings just couldn’t be masked from me any longer. It was a real influence for me and that’s one of the factors that brought my wife and I to the decision of leaving Singapore for good. My sense of restlessness about life in Singapore I have developed is reflected predominantly in this poem. I have also highlighted the fact that the history of Singapore is being destroyed before our eyes. The quote from my poem that I think really supports this is ‘Stain the blueprint of our past’s tomorrow.’. This is an effective metaphor because the Planners use blueprints to plan but its also a future. I found this quite ironic. ‘Past’s tomorrow’ is an oxymoron which is using two tenses. It takes a while to get your head around this but you soon realise that your history could be covered up by these dreadful projects. **Interviewer: What would you say is the central concern of your poems? Where do the similarities end and where do the differences between your poems emerge?** MA: People would not notice the objects that i describe in my poem The little things that we don’t look at such as the house in ‘pedantic rows’. Built ‘perfectly’ as they all have the same architectural style in rows. To me ‘pedantic’ symbolises an overly fussy community. Seems artificial to me. other people would see it as sanitary make them numb as Mr Cheng says in his poem. Beauty of nature is manipulated. complex in language Interviewer: it;’s interesting that you speak about this idea of ‘nature’. Mr Cheng you discuss this further in your poem BKC: nature has reacted to human action – battle between nature and man. I used personification with war terminology ‘sea draws back and skies surrender’. Planners have so much power they can rise above nature to quench their greed for money. What kind of cityscape were you imagining: Singapore/ Mumbai small islands- not enough space. Reclamanation of land and high rise buildings – skies surrender. What about the past: The history of my beloved land. Planners are trying to accomodate people. Cannot cover up heritage of a country. Our ancestors fought for our lives. And we are just treating it insignificantly. No unique identity left for a country. **Interviewer: Both poems convey powerful images of the effects of urbanisation. Can you select your personal favourite in the poems that you have written?** MA: In the second stanza where I list the images I come across that struck me. ‘Certain things: the smell of spilled oil a faint sickness lingering in the garages, a splash of paint on brick surprising as a bruise, a plastic hose poised in a vicious coil; even the too-fixed stare of the wide windows’. I find the listing technique very effective because it adds to the sense of my persona driving by the neighbourhood. It also brings to the reader’s notice objects and smells they might overlook. The absence of humans made the objects seem more real through the personification which I think is a really surreal experience.

BKC: I really think that the dental imagery was effective in my poem. ‘knock off usesless blocks with dental dexterity. All gaps are plugged with gleaming gold. The country wears perfect rows of shining teeth. Anaesthesia, amnesia, hypnosis. They have all the means. They have it all so it will not hurt, so history is new again.’ I think this is good because I found it quite witty. (If I may say so myself) *laughs*. The painkillers, the memory loss, the persuasion it really is all there. This is one of the more obvious ways of putting it, I do confess, but it really shows in an everyday way the damage these people are causing. **Interviewer: Portrayal of city planners in a critical light. How do they sell the dream of the ‘perfect home’ in your respective poems?** **Interviewer: The theme of nature versus man is crucial to the understanding of the poems. Why is it so?**