Nov 17 2009
We RAT on Felix Cheong!
Local poet, Young Artist Award recipient and, most importantly, one-time TODAY movie reviewer and columnist Felix Cheong has a new book of new and selected poems titled Sudden In Youth.
On Friday night, he’ll be at Books Actually for an event titled, get this, Ask Felix Cheong Anything.
The things you do to promote your book… Hee.
So in the spirit of things, I asked him a bunch of questions too.
As they say, word.
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Can you give us one good reason to buy your new book?
Oh, what the heck. Christmas is a time for giving and sharing, so I’ll offer three reasons:
1) You get to enter the headspace of sex workers in my poems such as “The Prostitute”, “The Stripper” and “The Massage Parlour Girl”.
2) You get to argue with God and live another day in my poems such as “Art, for Christ’s Sake” and “Shadow Boxing”.
3) You get to find out why a good old-fashioned Catholic boy who was once an altar boy ended up branding himself with a tattoo of a typewriter.
Ah, yes, the tattoo. Cool looking, that. What’s the number one guideline if we wanted to be a poet?
Look closely, closetly; live variously, vicariously.
What’s the number one guideline if we wanted to be Felix Cheong The Poet?
Develop a hang-up about religion so huge it can last four collections of poetry. But that’s it. This will be my retirement present to Singapore poetry.
I stumbled across this rather nasty bit of comment from a certain Anonymous over the internet. I shall quote the part that concerns you: “Felix Cheong, (other poets we shall not name)? Derivative drivel oversold to audiences with fancy design, clever marketing, and hype.” Quick, defend thy honour as a poet!
Like the Singapore government, I don’t respond to potshots. Only if you rank me in a list of 100 poets whose “derivative drivel oversold to audiences with fancy design, clever marketing and hype”, just below an obscure poet from Somalia, will I condescend to issue a press statement. My press statement shall read thus: “Like the Singapore government, I don’t respond to potshots.”
Where did the title for your latest volume, Sudden In Youth, come from?
From one of my poems. How much do people get paid these days for asking the obvious?
I’ll msg you, later. What’s your favourite poem in the book?
That’s like asking which kidney I should donate first. But when push comes to stab, it’ll be “Daddy’s Not Home”. It was the hardest poem I’ve ever had to write; it tore me apart trying to explain to my son why I left the family.
DADDY’S NOT HOME
Son, when a father leaves
what he left behind
he remembers, still loves,
like that familiar spot by the afternoon
window, or night bed, where he read,
you on his lap, frequent times
and faraways, a pair of runaways
riding roughshod, word-back,
daring to bring home
laughing songs, sudden sleep.
It’s not right, no, not his right
to go, come what may
it be, by choice or lack
of commitment.
How his guilt takes a beating,
feeds into his own, old wounds,
any way to absolve him
of absence, cowardice, words
heavy with duty and use,
every day of the weak.
Son, forgive him; no just cause
but only just because
walking out is not walking away.
He may never know
the point of no return
is
the point of no returns.
What’s the best book of poetry you’ve read recently?
Sudden in Youth. How much do people get paid these days for asking the obvious?
I already told you, I’ll message you later. So the best local book of poetry you’ve read recently?
See above.
Fine. What do poets do when they’re not writing poetry?
Look self-important while biting the end of a pen (and maybe getting lead poisoning in the process). Didn’t Nicole Kidman win an Oscar for that?
Are you talking about Gwyneth Paltrow in Sylvia? But then again, you’re the movie expert. Speaking of which, do you miss writing movie reviews for TODAY?
Very much yes. I love movies, I miss the freebies and I got paid for giving my claws a Tyra Banks airing. What more can a struggling poet ask for?
Don’t you think the question should be: what more can you ask a struggling poet? So what’s going to happen on Friday?
Your guess is as good as mine, man. I just put myself out there and let people take potshots at me.
Potshots? Nah. We’re asking you to write us a haiku. Can?
Haiku, on demand?
Selling myself short, for sure!
For thoughts need pennies.
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Ask Felix Cheong Anything happens this Friday, Nov 20, 7.30pm, at Books Actually, 86 Club Street. His latest poetry book Sudden In Youth is out now.
