Ex-DBS and UOB techie now heads Writers Festival

YONG Shu Hoong pursued computer science in university. After graduating in 1990, he joined DBS as a system analyst and programmer. Two years later, he enrolled in a Master of Business Administration course at Texas A&M University in the US. He thought he’d be in fintech all his life.

Then something strange happened. Feeling lonely among American students “who wore cowboy hats” and “talked about their fathers owning oil rigs”, he started to write poetry to cope with his homesickness, isolation and yearning for Singapore food. He joined a campus writers group for companionship. When he first read aloud his self-penned poem to the other members, he postfaced it with: “Does that sound like a poem to you?”   

After returning to Singapore to work for Singapore Computer Services, he saw a call for entries for the Singapore Literature Prize. He submitted a manuscript for over 40 poems he’d written in recent years, titled it Pangs Of Hunger, and – surprise, surprise – it was one of 10 works shortlisted for the 1995 Singapore Literature Prize.

“I kept wondering, what have I done? Are all these people actually saying I write good poetry?” says Yong. “Even after I’d published my third and fourth poetry collection, I kept feeling like I was bluffing my way through, pretending to be a poet.”

He would go on to win the Singapore Literature Prize for his 2005 poetry collection Frottage, and again for his 2013 collection The Viewing Party. Along the way he worked for Singapore Press Holdings and UOB in various capacities, and started teaching at Republic Polytechnic and Nanyang Technological University.

Now at 57, he’s set to lead the Singapore Writers Festival, the country’s premier literary event, for its next three or four editions. That feeling of being an imposter had already receded “when I was about 50”. And he’s putting everything he’s learnt in technology, business and literature to create a multi-faceted programming that will entice that 15-year-old poetry lover as much as that 50-year-old finance professional who “might never think of coming to a literary festival”.

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The upcoming festival in November may bring with it two Booker Prize-nominated or winning fiction authors, a New York Times best-selling science writer, an Eisner Award-winning artist and a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet. (Names will be only revealed closer to the date.)

“But there might also be certain non-fiction types of talks and panels that can help attract people from the financial industry, working just across the river from where The Arts House (the festival’s main venue) is. We’re looking at topics in business, technology and science that are of potential relevance to a broader community.”

In fact, Yong is pushing the festival to be more “interdisciplinary” and “multilingual”, and have stronger programming for seniors, whom he thinks are underserved. “If I compare the numbers based on statistics, there are probably about the same number of people who are going into the senior category (as young people)… It is precisely because of me at this particular age that I feel it’s an area I must make sure I do well in.”