By Yong Shu Hoong

Singapore's foremost female poet and Cultural Medallion Award winner, Lee Tzu Pheng writes poetry without the title of "Dr" appended to her name – even though she is a retired associate professor from the National University of Singapore (NUS), where she taught for over three decades.

These days, she prefers to reflect her faith by prefixing her Chinese name with "Anne", a name she adopted when she became a Catholic in 1989. So it is no wonder that her latest poetry collection, Catching Connections (2012), is a smooth blend of poetry and religion.

The book was launched in December 2012 in her parish, Church of St Mary of the Angels, together with two other books: Short Circuits, a collection of prose reflections, and Sing a Song of Mankind, a book of satirical nursery rhymes. These three books, released in one breath by Landmark Books, mark Lee's new publications after a gap of 15 years.

Born in 1946, Lee has previously published other collections of poetry, including Prospect of a Drowning (1980), Against the Next Wave (1988), The Brink of an Amen (1991) and Lambada by Galilee and Other Surprises (1997). She was the recipient of numerous awards like the S.E.A. Write Award (1987) and the Montblanc-NUS Centre for the Arts Literary Award (1996).

1) What are you reading right now?
Among the staples, books constantly at hand for dipping into are long-time favourites, Nikos Kazantzaki's Report to Greco, its counterpart (for me) the Franciscan poet-priest Murray Bodo's The Almond Tree Speaks, and the inexhaustible treasure trove, the poetry anthology, A Book of Luminous Things (ed. Czeslaw Milosz). I am a very slow reader and a re-reader, and like books that allow me to wander and meditate, such as current companions, Fernando Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet, Thomas Merton's Dialogues with Silence (Prayers & Drawings) and Krista Tippett's mind-expanding collection of interviews, Einstein's God: Conversations about Science and the Human Spirit. Most frequently consulted if not "read" like the other books: the Bible.

2) If you were a famous literary character in a novel, play or poem, what would you be and why?
The Snark. Prominent literary characters have a dimension that defies our grasp. I find it hard to imagine myself as any one of them. Therefore, I would prefer to be the Snark, both larger than life and elusive/illusive. The very attempt to get into its skin – if it has skin – is an adventure. Like the motley crew that sought it, I would be a hunter, but also the hunted. Wouldn't that be surreal fun?

3) What is the greatest misconception about you?
That I am confident, cool and self-possessed.

4) Name one living author and one dead author you most identify with, and tell us why.
If I may cite a living writer close to home, there is a lot in the writing of Boey Kim Cheng that resonates with me. I find the most affinity with his sensibility. Lately, the inherent restlessness in his themes complements and puts in perspective my own growing equanimity. Boey the person is very much in his writings; I meet a soul friend there. In history, there is a poet whose poetry embodies for me many epiphanies of being alive, in mind, body and spirit: G.M. Hopkins. I never tire of his poems.

5) Do you believe in writer's block? If so, how do you overcome it?
Yes, and no. "Blocks" seem to visit me and stay for years, the last one more than a decade. But that was probably because I don't even know one when I see one.

So I am the last person to give you a sensible answer on how to get rid of it.

6) What qualities do you most admire in a writer?
Integrity, humility, intelligent regard for the reader as reader, and a good ear.

7) What is one trait you most deplore in writing or writers?
Self-promotion based on delusions of grandeur. Not only deplorable, but downright embarrassing. And they give a bad name to other writers and the craft.

8) Can you recite your favourite line from a literary work or a piece of advice from a writer?
Although many pieces of good advice have come from writers living and dead, when I write, all their good counsel flies out the window. It is one thing to listen to good advice, quite another to practise it.

Favourite lines… ah, these one does not forget! "'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves / Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: / All mimsy were the borogoves, / And the mome raths outgrabe…" I know the whole poem perfectly, but it would be an imposition to quote it here in full.

9) Complete this sentence: Few people know this, but I…
have many songs – words and music – in my head; from Victorian parlour songs to folk and pop rock, "oldies", songs from musicals, children's ditties; and extended nonsense verse which I can rattle off in dialect (Teochew).

10) At the movies, if you have to pick a comedy or a tragedy to watch, which would you go for?
I'd just toss for it; either would give me both. Comedy and tragedy are two faces of the same entity. Just look at a human being.

11) What is your favourite word, and what is your least favourite one?
Favourite word: BABY (human, animal, vegetable, mineral, abstract). Least favourite word: SHOULD.

12) Please complete a couplet with the following words: formless, spirit, vault.

If you hadn't asked for a couplet, but let my lines be free and formless,
My spirit wouldn't be shouting in the vault at a task so silly and gormless!

13) What object is indispensable to you when you write?
A thesaurus is usually very useful, but not indispensable. What is really needed is SPACE: exterior, interior, visible, invisible. But that's not an "object"…

14) What is the best time of the day for writing?
Any time that SPACE (See #13 above) is available. That's more likely when I am alone and it's quiet.

15) If you have a last supper, which three literary figures, real or fictional, would you invite to the soiree, and why?
William Brown, Samuel Whiskers and Ramona Quimby.

Sorry about Sam Whiskers if you find him repugnant; he is an unforgettable old friend from childhood. That he is a fastidious fat rat bothers me not at all; I think he would enjoy the repast and I'd make sure there is plenty of butter in everything, and we most certainly will have roly-poly pudding.

William Brown has given me more laughs than my school friends when they were his age. He has a gift for creating the most side-splitting confusions. I would like him to give me my last gasp of laughter. He would most likely kidnap Sam Whiskers home to put in his sister's bed, so I'll have to be careful, for his sake (Sam's, I mean).

Ramona Quimby (aka Ramona the Pest) – another guileless and grossly misunderstood child, a natural misfit in the adult world. I think she and William would get along like a house on fire. The idiom could well prove unfortunately literal, but who cares? This is my last meal and I invite who I like, so there!

I love it when little people get together. They are a microcosm of our adult society, minus the hypocrisy, and it would be a lovely last supper to relive a last glimpse of what my world might have been.

16) What would you write in your own "letter to a young poet"?
I have actually written many letters to young poets – many now old, and many not poets, thank goodness. I believe they took the gist of my message to heart, namely: (a) why on earth write poetry if you have something else better to do? And (b) don't write poetry if you want to be a poet.

17) What would you write on your own tombstone?
Nothing. I don't intend to have one.

_____