Tete-a-tete with Lee Tzu Pheng

“A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.” Robert Frost

I was standing at border's flipping through local poet Lee Tzu Pheng's collection of poems "Lambada by Galilee & Other Surprises" and it struck me how revealing and intimate it is to read another person's poetry. I read her poem about teaching Tyger in a classroom and I laughed because it was all too familiar; I read her poem about the way of the cross and I thought—ah! she's a Christian; I read the one about finding Lucky Plaza on a map and I thought—she's kinda whimsical; and so, from having absolutely no idea who she apart from the role she has played as a local poet, I thought, hey, it would be nice to sit down and have tea and a chit chat with her.

I wish I could have my poems published one day too. But for now, my poems are too frivolous, too particular, too sentimental, and too unpolished. But it would be so cool to add my voice to the accumulation of local poetry in Singapore...