Felix Cheong Seng Fei (b. 1965, Singapore - ) is a poet and a recipient of the National Arts Council (NAC) Young Artist Award for Literature in 2000. He has published three volumes of poems. These are Temptation and Other Poems (1998), I Watch the Stars Go Out (1999) and Broken by the Rain (2003). Cheong is also an active promoter of the Singapore literary arts scene. He currently works as a freelance writer for local newspapers and publications like Today, The New Paper, and The Edge, as well as an instructor for creative writing workshops. Cheong is also the chief editor for art-e, an ezine by the LaSalle-SIA College of the Arts.
Education
Felix Cheong graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in English Literature from the National University of Singapore in 1990. During his undergraduate years, he was actively involved in varsity literary activities as the vice-president of the Literary Society. Several of his poems won prizes at university writing competitions. After graduation, Cheong worked as a producer with the Television Corporation of Singapore (TCS) and later as a studio director and training manager with the CNBC. In February 2001, he embarked on a creative writing programme with the University of Queensland on a bursary awarded by the NAC. He graduated with a Masters of Philosophy in Creative Writing in June 2002.
Works
Cheong displayed an affinity with words at an early age, having had several of his writings published in his primary school magazines. He continued to write during his college days but only turned to serious writing when he entered university. After dabbling with poetry for a period of 15 years, Cheong published his first work Temptation and Other Poems in 1998. The publication brings together a collection of poems that reflects his Catholic faith, love and those dedicated to his wife and mentor, Lee Tzu Pheng. In the following year, he released his second work I Watch the Stars Go Out, which continues the religious questionings in Temptation and Other Poems. Here, he reflects on his family and friends, and the relationship between the media and society. The poems on media and society were clearly influenced by his years in the media industry, and they inject a socially conscious element to an otherwise personal and contemplative collection. In 2003, Cheong published his third volume of work Broken by the Rain, which was developed from his Masters dissertation. This remains Cheong's most mature work to date. Then experiencing a creative dry spell, Cheong decided to look elsewhere for inspiration. By employing the use of the dramatic monologue, Cheong was able to give voice to those living on the margins of society. These include the bigot, wife-beater, stripper, prostitute, pimp and serial-killer.
Cheong's poems, articles and reviews have appeared in foreign journals, anthologies of local poetry, newspapers and poetry websites. These publications include No Other City: The Ethos Anthology of Urban Poetry, Journeys, Singa and Words for the 25th: Readings by Singapore Writers. His poems have also been dramatised in various productions such as One Night Standing, Poetic Licence and Second Link: The Singapore-Malaysia Text Exchange. Cheong also engages in editorial work. He edited Reshma Aquil's Sleeping Wind and guest-edited the Singapore poetry sections for Papertiger: New World Poetry #2 and the Slope poetry website.
Cheong is also an active promoter of Singapore literature locally and abroad. He has been invited to perform at the Brisbane Writers Festival, the Queensland Poetry Festival, the Austin International Poetry Festival, the Hong Kong Literary Festival, the Singapore Writers Festival, the Edinburgh International Book Festival and the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in Bali. He has led Singapore contingents for reading tours to the Philippines, Australia, United States and the United Kingdom. Cheong is also a mentor in the NACs Mentor Access Programme and has conducted several creative writing workshops in Singapore and Brisbane. In 2000, Cheong became one of the first recipients of the Singapore Internationale grants awarded by the Singapore International Foundation (SIF). He used the grant to promote Singapore literature abroad by purchasing and then donating local literary works to Southeast Asian departments in foreign universities.
The Writing Process
Cheong finds writing a difficult and lonely process. He notes his ideas and inspirations on a notepad or a piece of paper which he carries with him wherever he goes rather than writes on his personal computer. To Cheong, writing is a cathartic process so he writes best when he is troubled. His ideas for his works usually spring from an image, a metaphor, a rhythm or a message which he wants to convey. He enjoys wordplay and puns, and his favourite technique is the use of word inversion. The recurrent themes in his works are on love, the act of writing and humanity. Cheong credits Lee Tzu Pheng, his mentor, as a major influence in his development as a writer. So strong was the influence that between the years 1991 to 1996, Cheong stopped writing because he felt his works inadequate when he compared them to hers.
Awards and Prizes
2000 : NAC Young Artist Award for Literature
2003 : Second Prize for Brewer Guinness Singapore's "Write a Bestseller Writing Competition"
2004 : Third prize for Nothing Without an Image in Theatreworks 24-hour playwriting competition
2004 : Singapore Literature Prize nomination for Broken by the Rain
List of Published Works
1998 : Temptation and Other Poems
1999 : I Watch the Stars Go Out
2003 : Broken by the Rain
2005 : Different
2006 : The Call from Crying House
2007 : The Woman in the Last Carriage
Selected Poems
Death at 240km
Dylan in the Wind
This is the 10 o'clock News
Annabel
Face Paint
Who are you
Mission Statement of a Punk""
Queen Street Mall, Brisbane
The Wife-beater's Story
Meditations
Jael
Simon Says
Family
Wife: Synthia Lim
Son: Ryan Cheong
Author
Gracie Lee
References
(2000, December 22). 6 win awards for promoting Singapore. The Straits Times. Retrieved February 14, 2011, from NewspaperSG.
Chow, C. (2004, September 25). Literature prize makes comeback. The Straits Times. Retrieved February 14, 2011, from NewspaperSG.
Hara, C. (2005, October 16). Young Asian poets woo with words. The Jakarta Post. Retrieved October 2, 2006, from Factiva database.
Ho, V. (2004, October 30). Playing with romance. The Straits Times. Retrieved February 14, 2011, from NewspaperSG.
Leong, S. (2003, September 26). Best-selling authors. The Straits Times. Retrieved February 14, 2011, from NewspaperSG.
National University of Singapore. (2005). Instructors@NEX. Retrieved 27 December, 2005, from http://www.nus.edu.sg (then click on NUS Enterprise > NUS Extension > Instructors@NEX > Cheong Felix).
Oon, C. (2000, September 23). Easy ride for young artists?. The Straits Times. Retrieved February 14, 2011, from NewspaperSG.
Pang, A. (2003, April). Sex and the city poets. Quarterly Literary Review Singapore 2(3). Retrieved 27 December, 2005, from http://www.qlrs.com (then click on Vol.2 No.3 Apr 2003).
Tan, G. E. (2000, November 29). Following the call of the Muse. The New Straits Times. Retrieved October 2, 2006, from Factiva database.
Tan, K. (1998, September 5). Truth can be mundane too. The Straits Times. Retrieved February 14, 2011, from NewspaperSG.
Tan, P. (1999, July 10). Double your vision of things. The Straits Times. Retrieved February 14, 2011, from NewspaperSG.
Yeow, K. C. (2001, August 18). Spare, crisp and descriptive verse. The Straits Times. Retrieved February 14, 2011, from NewspaperSG.
The information in this article is valid as at 2007 and correct as far as we are able to ascertain from our sources. It is not intended to be an exhaustive or complete history of the subject. Please contact the Library for further reading materials on the topic.
