"Every Poem I Have Written Comes Back to This Poem", Wahid Al Mamun
As if I used to hold the shape of water. A natural body
holds its joy in its container. This was my innocence.
This, too, was its loss. As if a poem can always be
the pliable body you want it to be. I inhale deeply,
And in the infinite stretch between air and exhalation,
I am pierced by a hundred microplastic images,
a hundred synthetic insertions. I am held down
by the metaphor that claims to be a bridge between
form and idea. As if a bridge doesn’t obscure that
which runs below it. These words foment a thousand
toxic clouds. Maybe I have become them all. One
body of gas. Compulsion as poetic form. I cough up
a poem in the shape of my bronchial tract. It reeks
richly of blood. I cradle it in my antiseptic gloves.
/ Wahid Al Mamun is a Singaporean poet whose poetry lives on the intersections of family, migration, and intimacy. His works and translations have appeared in Cordite, PR&TA Journal, QLRS, the SingPoWriMo magazine, Call and Response, and--surprisingly--on a Instagram poetry aggregator account. He currently works in immigration law in Chicago.
/ COMMENTARY
“Wahid Al Mamun’s “Every Poem” had another title: “This is What Happens When You Become a ‘Trauma Poet’”… What caught my attention were the ecological metaphors, the microplastics and toxic clouds, the poem as pollution. Humanity struggles with what is doesn’t match what should or will be, and in writing this often manifests in the tension between “write what you know” and “use your imagination”. If “trauma poets” keep writing trauma because that’s just what they do best or know, then trauma becomes a feature to be re-enacted, the river poisons itself, and, and…”
/ Q&A
What inspired you to write this poem?
I’ll be very honest – the last couple of months? Years? have not been very fruitful for me as a poet. I’ve not been able to shake a feeling of stuckness that really took the joy out of writing, and have felt very isolated from the mechanics of writing a poem. And when I do find myself compelled to write, I find myself moving away from the expansive, outward-looking subjects I was drawn to in the past–family, migration, structural inequality – and found myself really fixated on the body, on my own body its own, autonomous instrument of production. I think this poem was the Frankenstein-child of both those impulses – stuckness and introspection – crashing at breakneck speed, birthing an ugly trainwreck. That’s another way I like to think of this poem – what does it mean for my poems to be ugly? Not that ugly is bad or contemptuous – I think, for instance, of Sianne Ngai’s “Ugly Feelings” and its ability to diagnose pervasive social conditions through “minor” affects. Another source of inspiration was Joyelle McSweeney’s poetry collection Toxicon and Arachne, which has some of the yuckiest poetry I’ve read in a while, but which still made me feel deeply for the poet’s grief. Looking back, I don’t actually think my poem is as ugly as I want it to be, but I like to think it’ll presage more ugly poems in SPWM ’23!
How has writing for SingPoWriMo impacted you as a poet?
I would literally not be a poet if it were not for SingPoWriMo. I’ve been on here since the start in 2014, and I’ve seen this community grow from a collection of weird undergrads and Raffles kids and an assortment of weird local poets into…quite something else. I think it’s interesting that SPWM has become its own genre in Singapore – we have SPWM journals, we have many poets who have gone onto publishing collections and chapbooks by having their start in SPWM, and we’ve had so many offshoots of anthologies in the local poetry scene.
And If SPWM is a genre, I think I’m also grateful to the community for producing subgenres that have also become fixtures of the local literary scene. I think, in particular, of migrant worker poetry, and of the hard work of fantastic poets and activists like Zakir, Rolinda, Bhing, etc. for expanding the canon of ‘Singaporean’ poetry, and for creating democratic spaces. These spaces aren’t just spaces of representation – I think what’s beautiful about SPWM is that they’ve also become spaces of reciprocative listening. Reading migrant worker poetry made me think about what it means to be a poet, and to think critically about why we write what we write. It’s more than just writing pretty words about pretty things! On that front, I feel like I’ve personally evolved since 2015. I mean, I hope I have!
In a way, SPWM has impacted me because it has impacted the scene writ large. I’m very happy to be a part of the Singapore poetry scene, even though I’ve now been living in the US for the last five years. (A sobering thought…)
What would you say to someone thinking about taking part in the next SingPoWriMo?
I really recommend that people spend at the very least 15 minutes of their day (on a commute? In a lunch break? In the middle of class..? haha.) reading other poems in the group. And not just the poems with >50 likes that the algorithm pushes to the top – I mean, seriously just scroll down and read, and read, and read. And like. And comment. And bookmark for future reread. And get inspiration from. And…possibly cite in a response poem? Personally, I feel like I learn so much from pure osmosis, and I’ll have loads more to learn this coming April!