Boey Kim Cheng, born in Singapore in 1965 where he later received his bachelor and masters degree at the National University of Singapore. He is of Chinese Descent.
Boey Kim Cheng wrote "The Planners" after moving to Sydney, Australia in 1996.
Cheng is suggesting that Singapore is losing its cultural value due to technological progress - he explores the two aspects of progress where some respect scientific progress while others respect culture growth. Additionally, Cheng somewhat indicates that Singapore is a controlling and inhuman state through "But my heart would not bleed/poetry" implies that art and modern progress of technology cannot co-exist together. Also, perhaps this highlights how technology is destroying the uniqueness of culture and nature in each different country all around the world.
The structure of the poem (if seen in the landscape view) pictures a skyline of Sydney/Singapore/any developing city that could be found nowadays.
The fact that he talks about the two different cultures in the poem relates to how he is of Chinese decent where he had been in an environment where he was taught to respect his elders whereas after he had moved to Australia he had a conflict with the two different societies.
ReplyDeleteBoey Kim Cheng poetry memorialises the past as a way of understanding experience, which for this poet has been one of ferrying between continents and cultures, between loss and recovery, present and past.
ReplyDeleteBoey's works are highly regarded by both the academic and writing communities in Singapore. Writer Shirley Lim remarked that he is the "best post-1965 English language poet in the Republic today", while Lee Tzu Pheng said: "I think he's the finest poet we've ever produced. The themes and existentialism of his writing, I've never seen anyone in Singapore who could write like that."
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