By Yeow Kai Chai

Witnessing Wahidah Tambee perform poems from her exquisite debut collection Eke (Gaudy Boy, 2025) in late July at Book Bar was a revelation.

Projecting her visual poems onto the wall, playing a pre-recording of her vocalising three of them and reading the rest live, she made clear that she was only demonstrating one approach in accessing what Shawn Hoo calls "a mesmerising archipelago of letters."

In the exegesis for Eke, which originated as her 2017 Master's thesis for her creative writing programme at the School of Humanities at the Nanyang Technological University, Wahidah took a cue from Roland Barthes in A Lover's Discourse: "My language will always fumble, stammer in order to attempt to express it." In this light, she explained that "the primary goal of word- and letter-displacements, and word and letter fragments in Eke is to form such obstructions and enact the "fumble[s] [and] stammer[s] of expression."

Eke subsists at the intersections of several things, never falling neatly into any category. It can be spoken, but it's not spoken-word in the emphatic, confessional, mellifluous mode. It's visual, but is it calligraphic?

Resisting a straightforward and biographical reading of her work, Wahidah seeks to make connections across the disciplines of psychology, linguistics, literature and the visual arts to uncover the ways and whys in communication and expression, and to ask further questions about the leftovers and disarticulations.

1. What are you reading right now?
A recently published paper titled "Modelling Nature Connectedness Within Environmental Systems: Human-Nature Relationships from 1800 to 2020 and Beyond" by Miles Richardson.

And then there's also Papermaking: The History and Technique of an Ancient Craft by Dard Hunter, and The Book Makers: A History of the Book in 18 Remarkable Lives by Adam Smyth.

2. If you were a famous literary character in a novel, play or poem, what would you be and why?
A winged creature, like the raven in Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Raven,' the blackbird, abstracted, in Wallace Stevens' '13 Ways To See A Blackbird,' the wise parrot in Hikayat Bayan Budiman, or the falcon in J. A. Baker's The Peregrine.

We've been in this human body for so long that all our perspectives, thoughts, memories, and feelings are marked and weighed by it. I wonder what it is like to think, feel and remember as a creature that can fly.

I did briefly think about being a dragon, but, as Jeff LaSala covered in his Silmarillion primer, being a "flying biohazard" might not be such a good idea for the environment.  

3. What is the greatest misconception about you?
That I have a plan.  

4. Name one living writer and one dead writer you most identify with, and tell us why.
Maria Popova of The Marginalian, and Maggie Nelson, especially in Bluets. The interconnectedness within what they both write is validating and something I aspire to. A thought, idea, and feeling is never just one thought, but connected to other thoughts, ideas, and feelings. A friend once shared that all our intellectual and emotional developments are not linear — they are circular, spiralling, and are tied in fine interconnected webs. It made life experiences make more sense with its constant recurrences and revisits, and dispels the notion that this march through life and life experiences is linear.

The late poetess Zaihasra (Zaiton Abdullah). During a particularly difficult time in my life, I stumbled across a collection of her handwritten letters which were addressed to Djamal Tukimin. In them she wrote of life in a village in Melaka and spoke of a nameless yearning which she tried to fill with poetry, reading, learning and routine. At that time, I think the English language felt flat and numbing to me, so rediscovering that there are these handwritten Malay letters that I can go to, to breathe and speak and listen in another language, to access longings and loss in another language, was reassuring. It kind of reminded me that I was not doomed or poor, language-wise? That I wasn't stuck with this English language I couldn't articulate with? It definitely led to a whole dive into Malay songs and poetry, and then to Hindi songs, Urdu poetry and qawwali, and then Arabic songs and qasidahs, and back again to the Qur'an… and to questions about language, expression, and psychology. When did English become the modus operandi? When and why did English become so transactional and perfunctory? How does accessing the same feelings and frustrations in another language allow for or complicate the feeling through and thinking through those feelings and frustrations? A compilation of almarhumah Zaihasra's letters can be found in the book, Luman-Luman Zaihasra: Bingkisan Setulusnya Kepada Sahabat.

5. Do you believe in writer's block? If so, how do you overcome it?
Yes, I do. The cure is a detour — the detour could be going for a walk or the detour could be a very long one, maybe one that takes years and several employments and other non-related pieces of writing.

The cure is also knowing that there is a return, and that there's always some way for something to be said, that saying can manifest itself in many other ways — through journalling, through letter-writing, through visual means (collaging comes to mind). And when you cannot say and cannot write, there are tears. And when you are all out of tears, there are still utterances in the shape of breathing. And when you can't breathe, your body will speak on your behalf. Expression is boundless.  

6.  What qualities do you most admire in a writer?
Fearlessness and conviction. It takes bravery to write, and to insist and persist in this endeavour.  

7. What is one trait you most deplore in writing or writers?
Hmm… I'm not sure.

I want to say purple prose?

It brings to mind a very specific memory of a primary school teacher who once said, "You don't need to use big words to write a good story." I remember her joking about the many variations of "one fine day" students try to impress her with, with their "cerulean sky," "ivory clouds," and "emerald trees." I may be misremembering here, but she talked about pace, I believe, of how a string of one-syllable words can speed up a story, and how a good one-line paragraph, beats adding "suddenly" at the start of a sentence in the next paragraph. For an 11-year-old, the advice she gave was utterly chill, simple and helpful, and wonderfully in contrast to the composition samples which rested success on bombastic words or a list of flowery phrases to memorise.

But then… I must acknowledge that it is a small pleasure to experience the feeling of the word "cerulean" in your mind instead of just "blue," something earthy about "ochre" and "umber" instead of brown. And there is an importance to allowing space for "the text to wash over you," as a professor once advised. I have learnt recently that sometimes meaning is not the primary purpose of the text, and to demand it to dispense meaning immediately might be a rash act. The music and soundscape of the words are also important and meaningful.

Okay, maybe my true beef is with children coming up to adults for writing advice, and the advice being "nah, memorise this list of flowery phrases" or "follow what this kid said in the assessment book."

8. Can you recite your favourite line from a literary work or a piece of advice from a writer?
The second portion of 'Aku' by Chairil Anwar is the fire we need to have fiercely burning in this life and times of witnessing or enduring continued oppression:

"Luka dan bisa ku bawa berlari
Berlari
Hingga hilang pedih peri
Dan aku akan lebih tak peduli
Aku mau hidup seribu tahun lagi."  

9. Complete this sentence: Few people know this, but I...
Deeply, deeply regret not taking English or Malay Literature in school.  

10. At the movies, if you have to pick a comedy, a tragedy or an action thriller to watch, which would you go for?
Action thriller, especially if it is historical.  

11. What is your favourite word, and what is your least favourite one?
Can it be a word-portion? Hahaha.

Long-time favourite: 'Journ' from 'Journ-al', 'Ad-journ', 'Journ-ey'.

Memorable favourite: "rawan hiba" — a Malay expression for an unyielding sadness, which I believe is a forgotten sibling to "gundah gulana."

Least favourite: 'Drone'  

12. Compose a rhyming couplet that includes the following words: palimpsest, curlicue, mortar.

On the brick and mortar of the surficial text,
A ghostly curlicue appears on the palimpsest.  

13. What object is indispensable to you when you write?
Depending on the writing, a pen or a pencil. Uniball Signo 0.38 in black for journalling, letter-writing, note-taking. A pencil for poems and annotations.  

14. What is the best time of the day for writing?
7am to 9am or 1am to 4am. These hours are the best for reflections.  

15. If you have a last supper, which three literary figures, real or fictional, would you invite to the soiree, and why?
Nat King Cole, Puan Nona Asiah, and Fairouz. These masters are the reservoirs of songs of love and longings of their places and times. I would not even need to be there to know what sort of wonderful words in what sort of wonderful arrangements in all the sorts of songs would appear and be exchanged between them.

The thought of the delight that Puan Nona Asiah would feel to be in their company is also delightful. I came across a large collection of songs she adored which she had typewritten or handwritten in her fine penmanship. Among of the songs she had written down were 'Autumn Leaves' sung by Nat King Cole, and 'Bint Shalabiyah' sung by Fairouz.  

16. You graduated with degrees in psychology and creative writing. How do you think your grounding in psychology has informed your poetic pursuit, and in particular, the writing and performance of Eke? Going forward, what is in your horizon, creatively speaking?
There was a period of time where the different spheres of my life revolved intensely around "words" and "meaning." I mean, at the beginning of any academic paper you read, in psychology or literature, the focus in the introduction would be in defining the terms that are being investigated. In critical analysis, the meaning would constantly be revisited with evidence from the text, and any nuance or challenge or complications to whatever notion was being investigated was teased out.

This same investigative thread followed me while reading Islamic texts where I began to understand the intrinsic connectedness between words, e.g. how concepts like 'ilm' (knowledge) is tied to 'alam' (the world) and 'ulama' (the people of knowledge) by the slight visual and aural modifications of a single root word. And then there are words whose meanings gained more nuance the more varied the fields of text you draw from. I remember for my undergraduate thesis thinking about the concept of beauty, as defined by philosophers, and then being absolutely thrilled about finding the motivational and emotional difference between the concept of beauty versus the concept of prettiness in psychological studies. It was a madly enriching experience to know that there were more ways to think about something, more nuances and more facets in this glimmering gem of meaning-making, and more reason to hold space for these varied arrivals of meaning.

I think when I was thinking of the poems of Eke, all of that energy kept me going. I was deeply immersed in all the commentary surrounding words, and was thinking about words cognitively, historically and socially, as well as how they looked and sounded. This included the development of words, the etymology of words, the psychological and/or cognitive weight of words, the linkage between words and memory, and the question of whether the lack of a word for a feeling affects the ability to feel that feeling. I remember enrolling in a course called Language in Perception and Thought by Dr Suzy Styles — this was where I encountered the bouba-kiki experiment by V. S. Ramachandran and Edward Hubbard. This was the course where we also repeatedly revisited the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and read paper after paper which supported or gave counter evidence to linguistic determinism. And then I was introduced to Orality and Literacy by Walter J. Ong, around about the time I was doing the exegesis for Eke, which made me think again about the impact of the written word as opposed to the spoken word on our conception of lived experience and memory. But it was also never just psychology and literature — art matters a lot in this as well, especially the way in which text is presented and how it impacts how we see beyond just the idea of words as a vehicle for the transmission of information.

That is where I think learning Arabic calligraphy, alongside learning about Islam, also shaped the way I thought about words and meaning. In Arabic calligraphy itself, there is meaning and additional nuances in the various ways in which the letters and words of a particular text is arranged or shaped — there's the basmala and then so many ways of arranging the text depending on the calligraphy style you choose. It's so fluid and varied. I've learnt from people who understand Arabic and who understand Arabic calligraphy of the profound presence and soulfulness to this act of arranging text — you place a letter here or write it in this way or in this measurement to emphasise a certain idea… and I think there is no way that did not leave an impression on me.

If I was obsessed about words and meaning then, right now I am deeply taken with the boundary in expression, the boundary between what we want to express and the limits articulation. And then, there is the madness in the different ways in which we collectively try to articulate and fail. Communication is so damned beautiful and vexing. So much literature exists because we are just that little bit out of reach in terms of how wholly we can express an idea, a thought or a feeling. We try so hard to find words for it, borrow words for it, try different words and word arrangements for it, traverse different languages and different fields for it, walk through a labyrinthine hall of mirrors for that one expression that articulates what wishes or does not wish to be articulated. And then there are all these noises in our lived experience as well as all these pockets in our lives where we lose words across generations or in our day to day lives. Going forward, I think it would be to revisit some of the older poems pre-Eke, and to find more ways to do a reading of Eke.

17. What would you write on your own tombstone?
"Here, finally, an untroubled rest."

_____