By Yeow Kai Chai

As a child born in the early 1960s, a transitional era when Singapore underwent tumultuous change from colony to independence, Heng Siok Tian assiduously locates self in contexts of history, familial and national, modern and traditional. Her poetry, likewise, is lived-in and realistic, seldom theoretical, and always sensitised to privilege and the concomitant absence of it; probing, but quite different from the polemical register of latter-day social justice champions.

She melds the polarising tendencies of her two early mentors—the moral, nation-defining stance of Edwin Thumboo and the Objectivist coolness of Arthur Yap—into a body of verse which is emblematic of an evolving Singaporean poetic parlance, questioning the past and the present, as it moves inexorably towards the future. At the same time, hers is also a distinctly feminine voice, drawing attention to matrilineal and marginalised concerns. Heng has said that she is trying to reach at an "inclusiveness of voices, verities and visions."

An educationist by day, she has written five collections of poetry: Crossing the Chopsticks and Other Poems (1993); My City, My Canvas (1999); Contouring (2004); Is My Body a Myth (2011); and Mixing Tongues (2011); and has co-written two books with three other authors, namely, The Adopted: Stories from Angkor (2015), and Lost Bodies: Poems between Portugal and Home (2016).

Her poems have been included in numerous anthologies over the decades, the most recent of which are Love and Life at The Gallery: An Anthology of Poems based on Artworks from the National Gallery Singapore (Poetry Festival Singapore, 2020); The Nature of Poetry (National Parks Board, 2019); Contour: A Lyric Cartography of Singapore (Poetry Festival Singapore, 2019), and Seven Hundred Lines: A Crown of Found/Fount Sonnets (Squircle Line Press, 2019).

Besides poetry and creative prose, Heng has written a short play, The Lift, which was staged in 1991, and was read at the Third International Women Playwrights' Conference in Adelaide in 1994. In 2000, she was a Fellow with the Iowa International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, USA, on a National Arts Council Fellowship.

1. What are you reading right now?
I read a few Biblical verses, and happen to be re-reading The Invisible Man by HG Wells, as well as dipping into the occasional poem in any anthology at hand.

2. If you were a famous literary character in a novel, play or poem, what would you be and why?
I have no desire to be anyone else as I am grateful for my present life.

3. What is the greatest misconception about you?
I don't think people care to think about me that much.

4. Name one living writer and one dead writer you most identify with, and tell us why.
There are many others I am not aware of so it is due to my limited reading that I am naming the below:

One living writer who amazes me is Margaret Atwood.

One dead writer I can identify with is Emily Dickinson.

The reason why I respect Atwood is for her staying power as well as her works. As for Emily Dickinson, it is the fact that she wrote with so little external acknowledgement and credit during her time. Both women are resilient in ways that I recognise are qualities undervalued these days.

5. Do you believe in writer's block? If so, how do you overcome it?
No.

6.  What qualities do you most admire in a writer?
Not so much specifically in a writer as it is for the general: recognising that one is first a human before all the other labels.

7. What is one trait you most deplore in writing or writers?
Not so much specifically in a writer as it is for the general: disrespect of other people's time and presence.

8. Can you recite your favourite line from a literary work or a piece of advice from a writer?
"The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want." – Psalm 23:1

9. Complete this sentence: Few people know this, but I...
 …was among those who had to consume powdered milk in primary school. It was common knowledge that children were undernourished from the 1960s to the early 1970s. Today, the mere thought of that milk can still evoke a nauseous feeling.

10. At the movies, if you have to pick a comedy, a tragedy or an action thriller to watch, which would you go for?
None of the above as I would prefer a movie with all three elements.

11. What is your favourite word, and what is your least favourite one?
This is a very tricky question. Words on their own should be "tools" in the hands of the user. So it's the writer's use that would generate the effect.

If I must respond, I would qualify. If it is a word I'd like to use, it would be "wisdom." If it is a word I'd like to hear, it would be "sorry" if the circumstance calls for it.

As for the least favourite word, I think every word has its time and season.

12. Write a rhyming couplet that includes the following three items: umbilical cord, dialect, photographs.

Photographs form an umbilical cord
to memory and dialect: still unexplored.  

13. What object is indispensable to you when you write?
Just a pen/pencil, and writing material.

14. What is the best time of the day for writing?
Any window of opportunity between 8 am to 9 pm.

15. If you have a last supper, which three literary figures, real or fictional, would you invite to the soiree, and why?
Anna Akhmatova, San Mao and Murasaki Shikibu. They lived through very different/difficult circumstances from mine, and would have much to enlighten me on perspectives, and the nature of suffering.

16. Few people know that your first three collections, Crossing The Chopsticks and Other Poems (1993), My City, My Canvas (1999), and Contouring (2004), contain the letter "C" which begin the titles. I understand it's your attempt to redefine the five C's which you feel are valued by many Singaporeans. As someone who has mentored generations of Singaporean writers and aspiring writers through the Creative Arts Programme, do you think the values which are held dear by Singaporeans have changed?
Definitely so. I sense that individuality is prioritised over a community, and the individual is more assertive.

17. What would you write on your own tombstone?
No need for a tombstone.

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