The Space of City Trees

Skoob Pacifica Series

by Arthur Yap

A collection of minimalist poetry which depicts the author, a leading Singapore poet, as a fellow victim and wry observer in a spiritual quest extending throughout Asia.

Genres: Poetry

147 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Arthur Yap Chioh Hiong (Chinese: 叶纬雄; pinyin: Yè WěiXióng; 1943–2006) was a Singaporean poet, writer and painter.

Arthur Yap was born in Singapore, the sixth child of a carpenter and a housewife. Yap attended St Andrew's School and the University of Singapore, after which he won a British Council scholarship to study at the University of Leeds in England. At Leeds Arthur earned a Master's degree in Linguistics and English Language Teaching, later obtaining his PhD from the National University of Singapore in the years after he returned from Leeds. He stayed on in the University's Department of English Language and Literature as a lecturer between the years 1979 and 1998. Between 1992 and 1996, Yap served as a mentor with the Creative Arts Programme run by the Ministry of Education to help inspire students and nurture young writers at local secondary schools and junior colleges. Yap was then diagnosed with lung cancer, and received radiotherapy treatment. Yap was known to be an intensely private man.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Yap

Reviews

[Yong Xiang · Rating 5 out of 5]

encountering arthur yap's work for the first time is an exciting experience. his poetic voice is detached but attentive, unsentimental but humane.

his poems show a heightened awareness of the routines that comprise everyday life. in my favourite selection, from his first book only lines , a number of the poems describe the moment of clarity when these routines are interrupted. as in the A-Level-tested "it rains today", or the famous "location":

so this village is still here
here without change
and if i stay here any longer
i am already
where i shall always be
here without change

in this village still here.
some things remain
some things pass,
some things are tired
bicycles arriving
cleaned bicycles departing.
and if today
not many people are arriving
do not change the day
to bring in yesterday
riding an old identity
which, anywhere,
has come and gone
every year ago.
and if you see a bicycle
leaning on the grass
neither tired or cleaned
then it is just resting
sufficiently
to make no sense at all

in the book's introduction, Anne Curtin suggests: "He repeats, reiterates and paraphrases so that the poems develop through a layering effect." She also notes "an emphasis on surfaces - as if everyday objects and events are the arena of our dramas - rather than an invocation of hidden and metaphorical depths in order to portray emotionality". both of these aspects of his writing i greatly enjoyed. the image... the act of perceiving... ah!

also, a wry sense of humour comes through in some of the poems, and the language is often playful and fun. see "on reading a current bestseller", "roll call" or "a lesson on the definite article", where he skewers a haughty chinese woman:

a crowded restaurant, open eavesdropping
graded into one another's ears. sharing table:
a bearded man, a girl with bank-teller's eyes;
they arrived after me, and an umbrella and 2 coats
which were there when i was.

i really love chinese food, you people can cook
beautifully. the bearded man had also a large appetite.
i can't cook, and her non-sequitur
'the poor chinese are like the 2nd class jws'
provoked these possibilities:
poor chinese are like 2nd class jews,
poor chinese are like the 2nd class jews,
the poor chinese are like 2nd class jews.

the she was, by the way, the chinese
& her the accent, showing she had arrived,
gone the places, reached the it,
made the it, confirmed she was the.

and, though rare, the poems can also be tender and intimate, like in "until", "absolute" or most notably the sg queer classic "your goodness":

for Keith

your goodness, i sometimes light
my anger with, is what you have. no one
can burn it away; it is not for my discussion.
i know, near you, i myself feel good.
& this is enough for me, my friend.

this is a life-time friendship; the poem
is short, inadequate and, except for a word,
totally redundant.

i'm glad i picked this up. it's really cool to think that this was a singaporean writing in the 1970s. arthur!

favourites: location, hurrying ahead, june morning, commonplace, things, stained glass, your goodness, paraphrase

[Lorraine · Rating 4 out of 5]

possibly one more star if it was a bit more consistent and if it was more accessible. I find him really tough to understand!

[Jeffrey Tham · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some very interesting, painting-like, abstract poems, which fascinated me.

[Sabrina Loh · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favourite Singaporean poets. Abstract but whimsical, even humorous, and with a brilliant ear for the unusual in language and the ways in which we understand our modern society.