The Form of Poetry｜Beautiful Singapore: The intersection of Urban and Florids

Lying on the ground unable to move.

Staring at the ceiling, I thought, it would be great if I kept lying like this from now on and the baby crawled on top of me from under the chair, as if he was climbing over a small mountain. Then the baby kept climbing up and down my body, up and down again, over and over again, like Sisyphus. Suddenly I felt that the ceiling had become my sky. Is this a curse in the city? Am I overwhelmed by life? Yes and no. At this time, I don’t know whether my current life includes my mental pain from the past; what is the relationship between life and life? Looking back in the spiritual world, it's like staring at the ceiling, which is colorless; taking a deep breath, it seems that you can feel the power in your body. I was lucky enough. I turned my eyes to the window and saw the whirling leaves twinkling in the sun. When I saw the news about the extinction of the paddlefish, I felt sick in my heart, and then I truly realized that nature, creatures, and animals are the balance of life, even in cities that don't seem to need them. Surrounded by them, you can better appreciate the power of being a part of this cycle; at the same time, when the reinforced concrete city sucks away the power of life, they can always give people hope. Maybe Emily was right, hope really was feathered and had wings.

It is said that Singapore won twice after Hong Kong lost its freedom and Shanghai was closed down. Many people thought about immigrating. Although I haven't been there yet, I know clearly that the three words "Singapore" always evoke urban images in my mind. Speaking of Singapore, I have friends and students in Singapore. They have different nationalities, but they all exude a modern atmosphere. Is there a collection of poems that describes the plants, animals and people in Singapore, combining the "pleasurable city-living" of cosmopolitan with the beautiful Florids, and allows us to see the integration of urban and natural ecology? of the Florids is just such a collection of poems.

of the Florids is a collection of poems by Singaporean poet Shawn Hoo that won the Diode Press poetry collection competition in 2021 and was published this year. So what exactly are Florids? The poet Shawn told us that Florids can be forests, old villas, or small shacks covered with rust; Florids can also be the sound of raindrops hitting the People's Park, like the snap of fingers. Florids are the green in the eyes of you and me who live in the city, and they are also the quarrel between wild geese and ducks that I hear every morning when I open my eyes...

Reading Shawn Hoo's poems is not only like being transported to Singapore, the Pearl of Southeast Asia with its garden-like ecology, but also like swimming back to my childhood, the happy girl who stepped on splashes on the rain-covered cement road and climbed the telephone poles. Despite all, because the poet's opening line brought me back to the kaleidoscope of memory——

 Of the myths this city boy believes in: nature
poems don't exist. The city as the source of metaphor.
That the songless warbler in my throat is more residue
—— "Referential"

Yes, I have only discovered in the past year or two that the city has swallowed up so many childhood memories, but I didn't know it. I thought that the so-called "convenience", "modernization" and "high-rise buildings" would allow me to keep moving forward. , in fact, my progress is not for myself, and all this will be so painful when I realize it. A little chess piece that has been played with for thirty years. So this is the meaning of my existence? No wonder I have PTSD. When I finally calmed down, I was able to dismantle the kaleidoscope and look at the beautiful fragments of cut hands inside. I realized that it was my contact with nature that kept me going. The "urban girl" I used to have didn't know what poetry was, let alone that the city was the real "source of metaphor"...

A previous article talked about the different development of fricative sounds in Cantonese and English in Eric's award-winning poem "Fricative". The same sensitivity can be seen in Shawn Hoo's "Referential". My childhood Lisp stuck on Lips . Even if I was corrected over and over again as I grew up, it seems to have become a memory that will never be forgotten.

I have always liked the different forms of modern poetry - it does not need to be abstract, but the words "controlled" by the shapes make me feel like a collective performance art. The participating words use body language to tell the readers, in addition to the literal meaning , there is also an intuitive expression. Last year I wrote "Show You the Crossed Out Lines" , and I see this form repeatedly in some poems, and I like this arrangement very much. Especially the crossed out lines represent the poet's attitude.

Although the poet's recollection of the "city boy" who believed in nature in the opening chapter has a somewhat cute lisp, in the subsequent poems the poet freely uses various languages ​​to switch and arrange, making the poem a maze of language, like a head. Yun is getting ready to go, a preamble or prophecy leading to the 21st century——

I can't count how many familiar or strange animals, plants, creatures and people are included in this small collection of poems. I only know that the poems take me back to my childhood again and again, to see the world that I have seen and never seen. To use my current words, the world at that time was simple, but this colorful simplicity was made up of so many complexities, and it burst out with such unstoppable power, that it could make the suffocatingly complicated life in adulthood return to its original nature. !

of the Florids is such a collection of poems that return to nature. The poet's control of language is skillful and unpretentious. The poems call for innocence but do not beg for mercy. With his head covered, he seems to see the elegance of "picking chrysanthemums under the eastern fence and leisurely seeing the southern mountains." If every city was constructed in this way, and could coexist overnight among the ever-growing florids, paddlefish might also be able to swim in the Yangtze River.