Death be Not Loud

Today I participated in a panel discussion at the Creative Arts Programme Seminar at LT13: as alumni of the programme, me, Alfian, Qian Xi and Nicholas Wong (a very precocious 18 year-old Malaysian writer) read our works and jabbered a bit about the importance of speaking truth to power, etc. Nothing terribly unusual. An MOE lady hogged our slot, so we only had about 15 minutes to discuss the Role of the Writer Today.

Anyhow, I'd read my "Loud Poem", wincing at how hackneyed this old work of 1999 had become. The kids loved it as usual. and applauded during the bits where I forgot the lines. I seem to have cultivated this strange absent-minded boy-in-grown-up's body persona.

And then after the event, a girl came up to me and thrust this note into my hand. It was written on blank printing paper, labelled: "MR NG YI SHENG" on the front, and folded into eight.

"Your loud poem saved my life - recovering from one strange cancer and (thankfully wrongly) diagnosed with a debilitating sort of leukemia and scared and failing at school and tired and stupid, I saw someone looking at me with concern I did not want and took out a book (ONEwinged) and opened it at random and saw tictic tictic tictic BOOM - and it captured my small teenage mind and helped me up again.

Thank you."

[not sure if I should write down her name].

Yow. It's very, very strange to think I might have been an inspiration. I'm immensely grateful to this girl for letting me know that my writing - no matter how jaded I feel about it - can make a difference.