BEARING THE TORCH FOR SINGAPORE LITERATURE

By Nah Damien

Diploma in Creative Writing for Television and New Media

Singapore Polytechnic

To say that Joshua Ip is a busy man is a bit of an understatement.

Besides having a full-time job, the 36-year-old is the co-winner of the Singapore Literature Prize in 2014 for English Poetry for his collection of poems Sonnets from the Singlish, as well the recipient of the Young Artist Award in 2017. He is also co-founder and Station Director of the non-profit Sing Lit Station, which aims to be a platform for readers and writers to meet.

“I have to multi-task everything,” says Joshua. “So I live half my life on the internet – I carry my phone everywhere, I WhatsApp while I’m driving.”

In an interview with the Mindful Company in 2017, he said he balanced his careers by “neglecting friends and family”; how much of that is dry sarcasm and how much is truth is unknown. But one only has to observe him in conversation – the rapid-fire pace of sentence after sentence, together with a calm yet calculated tone of speaking – to see a man who lives a life as fast as he speaks.

Passion for Sing Lit

So perhaps true to form, Joshua is currently working on several projects, many of which go beyond being words on a page.

Upcoming works include his graphic novel Ten Stories Below, a seven-language translation anthology titled House Party, and co-writing Farquhar: The Musical. Many of his projects are collaborations.

“I think [collaboration] makes me more accountable,” he says. “I’m a very lazy person; I usually don’t finish my own homework by myself.” Joshua describes the process as “a ping-pong game” where work is passed to and fro between collaborators, giving one more encouragement to respond.

Speaking of encouragement, Joshua is a believer that Singaporeans are not given enough motivation to explore and acknowledge Singapore literature. Although he recognises a “niche enthusiasm” for Sing Lit, he lists many factors that prevent local works from going mainstream – from the way literature is handled as a school subject, to the “colonial mindset” that Western material is seen as “better”, to short attention spans that are a result of the rise in technology.

Despite this, Joshua is still passionate about local stories. “As a post-colonial country which needs to establish itself as a nation, how else are you going to say what is Singapore?” he explains. “Even if it’s something like the LKY (Lee Kuan Yew) story, sure, so be it, but at least it's a local story. Something where… you feel a sense of Singapore.”

Sing Lit Station goes regional

Perhaps it is no surprise that his passion and advocacy of local literature led to his involvement with Sing Lit Station.

One may have seen Sing Lit Station hosting a variety of strange, unorthodox, yet fascinating initiatives over the years – most notably the Sing Lit Body Slam in 2017, where spoken word poetry and pro-wrestling met in the ring.

“Most of our programmes started as a Facebook thread in the middle of the night. There would be a response, a little bit of back and forth,” he says. These programmes are yet another example of Joshua’s willingness to collaborate across genres and disciplines.

And Joshua has a different direction for Sing Lit Station this year – to go regional.

The organisation’s trademark SingPoWriMo (Singapore Writing Month) has expanded into SEAPoWriMo in the coming years to include Southeast Asian countries. Sing Lit Station has also launched the 2018 Hawker Prize, a Southeast Asian adaptation of the US-based Pushcart Prize, to recognise poetry published in literary journals around the region. The 2019 edition of the prize will be open for submissions towards the end of the year.

“Ultimately, if there’s a whole community in the region that reads each other, and doesn’t look at the West only to be strengthened –  to duplicate the stamp and be the recogniser of what’s good –  then I think that’s very healthy for the market,” says Joshua.