Newsletter No. 412

12 No. 412, 4.2.2013 鄭竹文教授 英文系助理教授 2012新加坡文學雙年獎得主 你是怎樣開始寫詩的？ 我的學士和碩士學位都是在新加坡國立大學唸的。我修了一個新加坡和馬 來西亞文學的課程，很喜歡，我用傳統和學術的方法去研讀，但是文學不應 只是閱讀別人的作品，也應該涉及創作，以及了解作家寫作的動機。所以， 我開始對創意寫作和詩產生興趣。詩賦予你破壞和分解語言的自由，容許 你不合情理（起碼在最初階段）而隨意地把事物聚合，以達致更高境界的 情理。散文則較為凝聚和平面。有一段日子，我每晚花兩三個小時寫小說， 一年後才發現那根本不適合我。 除了在‘A Second Language’一詩裏你所表達的自覺不足（但願更認識 中國文化）之感外，你認為詩人最大的掙扎和挑戰是甚麼？ 我喜歡文學，因為它給我充分理由去閱讀、寫作和離群獨處。我不善交際， 不過，做詩人也意味着要朗讀自己的作品，組織一下活動，我得迫自己走出 去讀我的詩，我也曾在香港國際文學節和香港書展等公開活動演講。 在中大教授創意寫作的經驗怎樣？ 每年，選修我的課的學生背景殊異。寫詩講求的不單是掌握和運用語言，而 是生活和感受。只要你有感受，就可以寫詩。在香港，英文是實用語言，是 工具，但我嘗試向學生顯示，它也是思想和感受的媒介，是關乎他們的文化 認同的東西。 寫詩應用各種不同的方法構思，要做到這點，我教學生各種寫作策略。其一 是把一首詩逆向建構，通過這個拆解的步驟，他們會找到自己的風格。有時 我着他們在詩句之間插寫，又或假裝明白一首法文或意大利文詩，然後翻譯 成英文。我也會向學生展示一些影像，請他們回應。 你的詩集 The Mental Life of Cities 獲得英語組別的2012新加坡文學雙 年獎，集內大部分作品都是自由體。格律對當代詩有多重要？ 大體來說，今日大部分詩人都用自由體寫作了。所謂自由體，其實是捨棄傳 統格律而追隨其他藝術規則；誠如艾略特所說，從沒有絕對的自由。一首詩 聽起來的感覺是怎樣，變得十分重要。話雖如此，詩是可以用不同的審美方 法來欣賞。有些詩人不善經營聲音，但精於處理抽象概念，他們的意念帶有 美妙的節奏；有些對聲音觸覺敏銳，所寫的詩十分適合朗讀。 在後殖民時期的香港和在後殖民時期的新加坡寫作，主要分別在哪兒？ 英語在新加坡更為普及，所以用英語創作的詩人可以申請撥款資助出版、在 文學節辦讀詩活動或參加研討會。新加坡的英語寫作受眾較多。在香港，中 文寫作所得到的支持要多得多。 可有最喜歡的詩人？ 有。Edwin Thumboo。他可說是新加坡詩的始祖。我唸本科課程時，有一年 他曾是我的導師。我們班上有七人，每周見面兩次。現在他來港時我還有跟 他見面。 Photos of Prof. Eddie Tay in this issue are by Keith Hiro  Prof. Eddie Tay Assistant Professor, English Department Recipient of the biennial 2012 Singapore Literature Prize Please tell us about your path to becoming a poet. At the National University of Singapore (NUS) where I did my first and second degrees, I took a course on Singaporean and Malaysian literature. I liked it and studied it in a traditional, scholarly manner. But literature is not only about reading people’s works, but also about producing them and understanding why writers write. So I became interested in creative writing and poetry. Poetry gives you the freedom to destroy and decompose language. It allows you not to make sense (at least not initially) and to bring arbitrary things together to achieve a higher kind of sense. Prose tends to be more coherent and linear. There was a time when I spent two to three hours every night working on a novel only to find that it wasn’t working for me after a year. What have been your major struggles and challenges as a poet, apart from the sense of inadequacy (from not being as well-versed in Chinese culture as you’d like) as expressed in ‘A Second Language’? I like literature because it gives me a good reason to read and write and be solitary. I’m not a very socially inclined person. But being a poet is also about reading your poems and organizing events. I have to force myself to go out and give readings. I’ve also given talks at various public events such as the Hong Kong International Literary Festival as well as the Hong Kong Book Fair. What has your experience teaching creative writing at CUHK been like? Students from different backgrounds take my creative writing course every year. Poetry isn’t only about your grasp of the language; it’s about life and your feelings. As long as you feel, you can write. In Hong Kong, English is a pragmatic language. It’s a tool, but I try to show my students that it’s also a medium of thinking and feeling, one that has to do with their cultural identity. To write poetry, you have to think in different ways and to do that, I teach them various writing strategies. One of them involves reverse-engineering a poem and through the process, they would find their own voices. Sometimes I have them write between the lines of a poem, or pretend they understand a poem in French or Italian and translate it into English. I also show them images and have them respond to them. The Mental Life of Cities recently won the biennial 2012 Singapore Literature Prize (English Category). Most of the poems in the book were written in free verse. How important is metre to contemporary poetry? In general, most poets writing today engage in free verse. But free verse is about abandoning traditional rules to follow other artistic rules; as T.S. Eliot says, it’s never really free. How a poem sounds becomes very important. That said, there are different aesthetics to poetry. Some poets have no sense of sound, but handle abstractions very well and there is a wonderful rhythm to their ideas. Some have a great sense of sound and their poems lend very well to being read out loud. What is the main difference between writing in post-colonial Hong Kong and post- colonial Singapore? English is more commonly used in Singapore, so English-language poets can apply for publishing grants and for funding to read at literary festivals or take part in seminars. There’s a larger audience for English language writing in Singapore. In Hong Kong, there’s a lot more support for Chinese writing. Any favourite poets? Yes, Edwin Thumboo, who many consider to be the founding father of Singaporean poetry. He was my mentor for a year while I was an undergraduate. There were seven of us in his class and we met twice a week. I still meet up with him when he comes to Hong Kong.