Imagining the nation: The role of Singapore poetry in English in "emergent nationalism"

Abstract

Anglophone poetry has played a central role not only in the development of a national literature in Singapore in the first few decades after independence, but also in the articulation of a kind of national consciousness, a rhetorical rehearsal for an emergent nationhood. Examining the works of poets Edwin Thumboo, Goh Poh Seng, Arthur Yap and Lee Tzu Pheng - the first four Anglophone winners of the Cultural Medallion for literature, the Singapore government's highest cultural award - we see attempts to address nationhood not only in the thematic and stylistic projects of these poets, but also in the institutional support it receives from the government and the resonances between the poetic and official articulations of nationalism. Although this Anglophone and poetic nationalism (at some odds with the plebeian, carnivalesque and dialogical nationalism associated with novelistic narratives) clearly has its limits in a multilingual and multicultural new nation, it leaves an indelible impact on the early development of Anglophone literature and culture in Singapore. Copyright © 2006 SAGE Publications.