Fraternizing with Singaporean Writers

Robert Yeo's Routes 2: A Singaporean Memoir 1976-2000, recently published by Word Image Pt. Ltd., is a sequel to his first Routes memoir covering 1940-75.

- Alfred A. Yuson

He's been my oldest Singaporean writer-friend, the first of many throughout five decades. We met in September 1978 in Iowa City when we started our fellowship at the International Writers Program.

Having to share a two-room apartment, we quickly agreed that since I could cook and he couldn't, then he'd have to do the dishes. I eventually threw in a bonus. I'd cut his hair. Mine didn't need scissors, since I was growing it long. It had reached my shoulders when Robert took a photo of me aboard a Mississippi River boat on a cruise. I used it as a mug shot for the back cover of my first book of poetry, Sea Serpent, which came out in 1980.

In a way, he has just paid me back in kind. The front cover of his latest book sports a montage of photos of his family, friends, and colleagues. I appear in a solo pic on the upper right-hand corner.

A poet, dramatist, and fiction writer, Robert already had two poetry collections when we met. He had also traveled considerably around our region. His inherent nationalism and interest in politics took him beyond literary engagement.

Early in Routes 2, he mentions initial influence from Edwin Thumboo, the acknowledged grandfather of Singapore's English writers, who fraternized with a Filipino counterpart, eventual National Artist for Literature F. Sionil Jose. Also cited are Singaporean novelist Go Poh Seng and fictionist colleague Catherine Lim.

Yeo expresses disgruntlement over caustic observations by Paul Theroux, who had taught for years in Singapore. In The Great Railway Bazaar, Theroux had written: "...I believed it to be a loathsome place: many of my students thought so too and they couldn't imagine why anyone would want to stay there..."