06-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Straits Times
Poet Boey Kim Cheng at 60: ‘You learn to love what you have lost'
Even after emigrating from Singapore in 1997, poet Boey Kim Cheng continues to write about the vexed knot of a vanishing Singapore.
SINGAPORE – When it comes to chronicling urban change and memory in verse, poet Boey Kim Cheng is peerless in Singapore.
Even after emigrating from Singapore in 1997, Boey – who has made a home in Berowra, New South Wales in Australia – continues to write about the vexed knot of a vanishing Singapore. He was born on June 10, 1965.
His most
recent collection, The Singer And Other Poems (2022), won the
Kenneth Slessor Prize For Poetry at the New South Wales (NSW) Premier's Literary Awards in 2023.
His books, Another Place (1992) and Clear Brightness (2012), have been texts for the GCE A-level literature syllabus.
In a poem titled No More, Boey writes: 'No more / coming home as to a death sentence. / No more leaving after this leaving.'
Can you share more about your childhood photo?
The baby photo might have been taken in my mother's friend's house in Dakota Crescent. We moved a lot in those days, so I can't be sure.
A first-year baby photograph of poet Boey Kim Cheng.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF BOEY KIM CHENG
What is your core memory of Singapore?
There is no core memory, but a collage or montage of still or moving images. Walking through Change Alley and the Arcade, savouring the smells, sounds and sights. Sitting on the steps of Clifford Pier and watching the bumboats in the harbour. Reading on the lawn in the Botanic Gardens. Playing in the abandoned British Army barracks in Depot Road and along the railway tracks nearby. Taking the night train to Kuala Lumpur from Tanjong Pagar Station.
What do you consider your biggest contribution to Singapore?
I don't like to make any claims about my work. I started writing mostly to make sense of what was happening or had happened to me, and my first real poems were about my army experiences, trying to salvage something from the 2 ½ years soldiering. I think it was the first time the army found a place in Singapore poetry.
There weren't that many poets starting out at that time and not much support in the form of writing grants and programmes, so it was mostly a solitary journey. But I was lucky Singaporean poet and Cultural Medallion recipient Lee Tzu Pheng was my tutor at the National University of Singapore and recommended me to Times Publishing Group.
Later, I was also very fortunate that Another Place and Clear Brightness became GCE A-level texts, especially after I had emigrated to Australia. I suppose my poems mapped a vanished Singapore and a journey of self-discovery that spoke to Singapore readers.
Clear Brightness by Boey Kim Cheng.
PHOTO: EPIGRAM BOOKS
What do you love and hate about the country?
You learn to love what you have lost. The Singapore of my past and memory. The old, vanished places and whatever traces are left of them. The multicultural mix, the distinct ethnic quarters – Little India, Chinatown, Arab Street and the old buildings, the old places.
In middle age, you learn to let go and not hate even things that upset you before, like the constant tear-down and rebuilding in Singapore, the frantic pace of life and change, the disappearance of old buildings and places.
What is one thing you miss about the Singapore of your childhood?
The open spaces, the lallang fields, the buildings and life on the Singapore River, the smell of the river and the harbour, the sense of adventure I got walking in Orchard Road when the only tall buildings in sight were Mandarin and Cockpit hotels.
A photo of a young Boey Kim Cheng.
PHOTO: ST FILE
What is the best and worst thing about being 60?
You learn to slow down, step away and look back and be grateful for the beautiful moments and even the difficult experiences that have led you to the threshold of old age. You are grateful for each good day you have. The worst thing is the deaths of parents and friends.
SG60's theme is Building Our Singapore Together. What would you like the Singapore of the future to look like?
I hope the country will step up its conservation efforts, and the few places that have survived demolition, redevelopment and makeover in the years since independence will be there for future generations to connect with.
And what does your next era look like?
Not sure. It's another journey ahead, and as with most journeys that have led me to where I am, it's better not to plan too far ahead and just take it step by step, day by day.
