By Mabel Loh

A few days ago, a friend of mine passed me a copy of Jerrold Yam’s Intruder. It was a gift meant to provide a form of cathartic release from the sense of displacement and restlessness I experienced upon returning from exchange in the UK; indeed, it did not disappoint.

Yam is a young Singaporean poet currently pursuing a law degree in University College London. His youth belies his accomplishments, as his poems have been published in over twenty countries and eighty literary journals. Intruder is his third collection of poetry, recently published this year. The collection draws from his diverse experiences both in Singapore and overseas. Written from a first-person perspective, his poetry is intensely personal, drawing listeners into his innermost thoughts and private ruminations on life. He relives the apprehension of leaving the comfort of home for foreign territory, fond memories of his childhood and grandmother, the paradox of family as a provider of unconditional love and simultaneously a site of alienation, and also indulges in sensual explorations of past and current romantic relationships.

These experiences are painted with a light and tender touch, crowned with sparse, monosyllabic titles such as “Doubt”, “Kin” and “Route”. These simple and yet poignant titles express a deep sense of yearning, articulating an absence that marks the difficulties of fully expressing the complexities and contradictions of human experience. Yam engages with the themes of displacement and transience, considering the fluidity of ‘home’ and the ‘self’. He questions:

“Home, like love, may be a fiction that we must resist claiming for our own. After all, can we — and should we — be more than just intruders?”

Considering the questions of Singaporean-ness and rootedness, what then, makes us who we are, as part of an intentionally constructed and imagined community?

To perhaps answer these questions, I would like to explore some of his poems that I found rather poignant and thought-provoking. The first would be “Route”, which recreates the sensory experience of walking through his neighbourhood in the still of the night. Natural imagery is used to describe the fading of lights and the encroachment of silence and darkness, with “lights retreating into smaller and smaller/ spaces like ants, lids/ of cars drying like a herbalist’s medicinal crop”. The atmosphere created is one of peace and serenity, allowing for the focus on the private state of mind. The reference to a “herbalist’s medicinal crop” is also an image that can be read as “Singaporean” in essence, with the drying of traditional herbs on crinkly paper on glass cabinets of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) shops being a typical scene in the heartlands. The first half of the poem hence recalls the familiarity and comfort of this memory, and points to specific Singaporean experiences:

This is the time when I’d walk back
After a day out, in the lavish
hiatus between university
and National Service…

Walking becomes an exercise of routine, a time for reflection and introspection, with the act itself leading him on a “route” to a literal and figurative home. The poet hence creates a spatiality that is infused with uniquely Singaporean elements such as “National Service” and TCM shops. It persists in the backdrop of his poem, even as he contemplates a future distant from the motherland:

And I would remember no matter
smoke or gravel, kiss or handshake,
to wrench my heart
back in place, as a compass adamantly
rights itself, heeding
walking’s familiar rhythms
to where I am welcomed home.

There is an incessant pull of home that compels him to violently “wrench” his heart back in place, an action that suggests a slight sense of reluctance at doing so. Nonetheless, this compulsion is naturalistic and unexplainable, just “as a compass adamantly rights itself”, without knowing the exact reason for doing so. Just as how the needle of a compass will always — inevitably, “adamantly” — point to the North, his heart will always respond to the call of Singapore, even though the reasons might not possibly be articulated clearly.

Throughout the collection, there is a sense of the rupture between the self and the nation. There is never a complete and willingly identification with being Singaporean, and yet, the idea of belonging is so deeply entrenched within him that he can never truly break away. In “Routine”, he remarks on the “strange and unapologetic” place that he occupies, away from the “home [he] never accepted” on his birthday. There is an overwhelming sense of displacement as the persona looks out into the city of London, a “city [that] accelerates into winter, shedding/ inhabitants at each interval.” The physical space he occupies is cold and unsentimental, with the winter sky heightening the feeling of displacement, loneliness, and transience. The city is relentless in its pursuit of change, and the mention of “winter” also brings to mind the cyclical repetitions of seasonal change. Fluidity is the only constant, and change waits for no one. There is at once an unbridgeable distance and yet connection between the persona and home, a place that he simultaneously yearns for and yet rejects.

The paradox of distance and connection is also drawn out in “Darwin”, an exploration of his identity as partially constructed by his parents’ expectations; expectations which he regrets being unable to meet.

Then, like the most natural thing, I feel
disappointed at the disappointment
of being their son…

He sees himself through the eyes of his parents, constructing an image of the self that is “the fruit of their tiresome love/ broken from its stem.” The burden of fulfilling expectations weighs strongly in this poem, and the image of a fruit “broken from its stem” suggests a break from the rooted tree that provides nutrients and allows for growth. With this break comes the promise of freedom, of birth anew in other lands and the possibility of leaving the negativity and pressure experienced.

Yet, just as he writes in other poems, invisible threads of connection bind him to family and home. The relationship he has with his family is a paradoxical one, one that cannot be simply explained by logical strains of thought, nor resolved in the blink of an eye. The intimacy and alienation he feels are reminiscent of his relationship with the homeland — he is a “son” of Singapore — and can be interpreted as a microcosmic representation of a youth’s relationship with the nation. Yam thus adeptly explores the confusion and contradictions of being tied to the nation (despite being physically distant) by inexplicable ties that urge an overwhelming sense of belonging. Feelings of displacement are placed right next to the notion of rootedness.

Yam’s poetry has successfully reached out to an audience beyond the shores of Singapore, holding an international appeal and yet retaining its status as national literature. In considering what makes literature “Singaporean”, it is interesting to note that Yam rejects the use of Singlish, and instead weaves an impression of the nation through his private experiences that references public spaces within Singapore. He deals with familiar themes of exile and return, and expresses what many fail to articulate though simple and yet elegant writing. Yam’s style might not necessarily be defined as conventionally “Singaporean”; however, the resulting accessibility of his writing to non-Singaporean audiences could partially explain his widespread appeal.