ELC Reading Club#4 Millennial Voices Poetic Evening with Dr. Too Wei Keong

        On 28 May 2021, the day before the first school break started, the English Language Centre held the fourth reading club online on Millennial Voices, a volume of poems by Malaysian writers aged 35 years and below. This remarkable poem compilation brings together thirty-seven fresh voices in a collection of sixty-nine poems in the second decade of the twenty-first century. The poems touch on themes ranging from everyday concerns to identity, growing up, dealing with the loss of parents and grandparents and political satire, things and issues we can all relate to. This time round, we were honoured to have Dr. Too Wei Keong, an associate professor and interim head of the School of Education, University of Nottingham, Malaysia Campus and a fellow of The Higher Education Academy to chair the event.

        The reading club was held online via Google Meet, and was joined by 17 students and two teachers. Dr. Too started the event by inviting all the participants to briefly introduce themselves and explain what made them sign up for this event. Many participants expressed that they joined as they have interests in poetry. Some said they had been invited by their friends while a few mentioned that they had been curious about ELC reading club activities and decided to give it a shot. 

        Prior to the session, Dr. Too invited three poets whose poems were featured in the book to record themselves reciting their poems. They were Aisha Hassan who wrote Two Lyrics for the Afterlife:Two Trees, Kwan Ann Tan, the author of Qing-Ming and Yee Heng Yeh who composed Thoughts on the Common House Spider. The video recordings stirred quite a bit of excitement among the participants as they were eager to see the faces behind the poems they had read. Having played the recordings, Dr. Too explained all the three poems in detail, prompting the participants to share their thoughts as he went. It was interesting to see the three poems being approached from different perspectives as each participant had a unique interpretation of the poems.

        Among all the poems, one called Bodoh by Hana Zainal Abidin was the crowd’s favourite. Bodoh is a simple poem which is easy to understand and describes the emotions one experiences when being called stupid. When deciphering this poem, Dr. Too highlighted the sensory verbs such as hear, see, feel and taste, which were creatively used by the author to generate a strong emotional response from the readers. Participant Ng Yun Xi, who recited the poem, shared that she found this piece interesting as it is very relatable because everyone gets called “bodoh” at least once or twice in a lifetime.   

        Some participants also volunteered to recite some of the poems they like during the session. Rachelle Tan from S3 Wellington recited a poem entitled Banana for Teoh Beng Hock, claiming that she found the title of the poem interesting as it features a fruit alongside a name of a person. Initially, she thought it was a light and easy read. After much research, she was shocked to discover that the poem was about a political aide who was found dead on a rooftop of a building. Rachelle mentioned that it was an eye-opening experience for her to learn how such a dark, mysterious incident could be expressed in the form of a poem, using symbolism like a banana to convey a specific meaning to the audience.

        The poetry appreciation session ended at 8.20 p.m. Dr. Too thanked all the participants for showing up and brought up the fact that all the poems featured in Millennial Voices are written by young Malaysians from the age of 16 to 35. He encouraged the participants to continue creating art in the forms of poetry and he hoped that one day, their work will be published.