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Moving People With Words

Poems on the MRT

In Good Faith by Wong May

 

To be sure, love wasn't
there in the beginning, yet

Pray that love may
somehow be in the end,

After 5000 years or so,
a dandelion, a yellow chick,

Out of nothing, no sun,
no yolk, I thought, as

The train slowed down
& I saw you at the terminus,

Radiant

Published in A Bad Girl's Book of Animals (2023)

Purchase the book here.

Born in China's wartime capital of Chongqing in 1944, the poet and artist Wong May moved to Singapore in 1950 with her mother. After attending Chinese-medium schools, Wong May enrolled at the University of Singapore, majoring in English Literature. After graduating in 1966, she obtained her MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1968. Three collections of poetry would be published in the US by Harcourt: A Bad Girl’s Book of Animals (1969), Reports (1972) and Superstitions (1978). Her fourth collection of poetry, Picasso’s Tears: Poems, 1978-2013 (Octopus Books, 2014), selects poetry across four decades of writing. Wong May moved to Dublin in 1978 with her husband, Irish physicist Michael Coey, where she continues to reside. Her latest work is the collection of translations In the Same Light: 200 Tang Poems for Our Century (Carcanet, 2022; The Song Cave, 2022). In March the same year, Wong May received a Windham-Campbell Prize for her body of work in poetry.

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Poems on the MRT is an initiative by the National Arts Council, in partnership with SMRT and Stellar Ace. Produced by Sing Lit Station, a local literary non-profit organisation, this collaboration displays excerpts of Singapore poetry throughout SMRT’s train network, integrating local literature into the daily experience of commuters. Look out for poems in English, Chinese, Malay, and Tamil in trains on the East-West, North-South and Circle Lines, as well as videos created by local artists and featuring local poets in stations and on trains. The Chinese, Malay, and Tamil poems are available in both the original languages and English. To enjoy the full poems, commuters may read them on go.gov.sg/potm.

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