by Low Kian Seh
souls, is a networked canopy of lives
having taken root, sprouted and borne fruit,
is a ceiling serving as a lid for a coffin
when it is time to go. a different kind
of going than a relocation; a dislocation
of joints where old friends bind like
bone and sinew. memories of children
and grandchildren tethered to rooms
of a flat that aged together; deterioration
happens to not only buildings. a house is
not a home without the lives belonging
to it; transferring belongings to a new
place does not fully replace the former
ties in displacement. interconnected flats
do not simply become a kampung; a village
does so much more than raising a child
Low Kian Seh: In my earlier years of poverty living in rental flats owned by Singapore’s Housing Development Board (HDB), my family was subjected to two rounds of relocation due to redevelopment of the area. A home is far more than just a house, and being forced to uproot yourself is an experience very different from moving to a better place of your choosing. So, when I came across this article on Channel News Asia, I recalled past emotions, and it compelled me to write.
This poem responds to the inescapable power of the agencies in charge of urban redevelopment in the name of progress. It deals with the tension of change; even though ostensibly, a person might deem it to be better both for the individual and perhaps for society, the conflict comes from the sense of loss of everything else in the environment tied to a place, including the people in the vicinity. Though it is not oppression, those who experience this jarring relocation will feel the discomfort deeply. The older the person, the longer the ties to a place, the more their wellbeing is threatened by the sense of their familiar world come crashing down. I really wanted to capture the sentiments of what a neighbourhood and even a house containing precious memories can mean to a person, and how gutting it would be to lose everything they are used to.
On a different note, the mention of flats in the poem was meant to contextualise the predicament as one pertaining to the majority of Singaporeans living in HDB estates, and often this redevelopment eviction hits those who live in the very old estates and blocks that house poorer tenants. This is not to say that those living in private or landed properties have not faced relocation due to construction of infrastructure such as expressways, roads and MRT tunnels or stations, but these are probably fewer in number, due to the very nature of the properties themselves in terms of population density. The sense of inequality is subtly embedded, and is meant to be something tangential, only if you think a little deeper as to who might be affected by such policies; this poem serves as a reminder as to whom the relentless march of urban progress might inadvertently trample underfoot.
Published: Thursday 21 October 2021[RETURN TO WRITE TO POWER]
Low Kian Seh has a chemical engineering degree but is an artist to a larger degree. He is a chemistry teacher by occupation but has poetry as preoccupation. He always makes time to write, despite being a busy civil servant and father-of-three. His works had been published in SingPoWriMo anthologies, A Luxury We Cannot Afford, A Luxury We Must Afford, Twin Cities, Anima Methodi, Contour, To Let the Light In, and many other anthologies, aside from issues of Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine as well as zines and online publications such as The Atelier of Healing. He won first prize in Singapore’s National Poetry Competition 2019, but he is better known for his twin cinema poem, “Singaporean Son”, which went viral, twice. He was shortlisted for Sing Lit Station‘s Manuscript Bootcamp 2021, and still harbours the dream of having a published poetry book to his name.