garden city
Singapore
2025, Senior, Poetry & Spoken Word
garden city1
the island inhales through banyan lungs
and exhales LEDs across the sea.
wildness curated, entropy tamed;
substrates ceded.
this city forged from island dreams.
orchids2 bloom behind biometric doors;
roots twist in suspended soil.
us born of mangrove syntax,
salt-tongued and sun-skinned,
our stories sedimented in
koi ponds and hawker smoke.
hornbills wing across HDB3 dawns.
ribbons of neon unraveling into littoral dusk;
entropy, wildness, coiffed, consorted.
substrates: mollusk, myth, kampong soil— ceded.
asphalt epochs stitch to
the kampong ghosts dreaming beneath concrete strata.
beneath neon stars.
dispossessed of its wild cadences,
water channels through the sculpted longkangs.4
such are the veins of a city that never bleeds.
within marina bay5 blooms futures
in domes of biospheric glass—
jungle knots root under sky gardens.
substrates: heart, nacre, husk; exhumed.
somewhere beneath the MRT6 chime,
a cicada insists on relevance.
all, such anachronisms.
away koi trace prescribed arcs beneath halogen moons.
the city exhales its chlorinated breath,
the garden persists—
1 The “garden city” vision was introduced by then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew to transform Singapore into a city with a green and clean environment to make life more pleasant for the people
2 The national flower of Singapore is a hybrid orchid
3 The widespread public housing in Singapore
4 Gutter
5 New downtown of Singapore, built on reclaimed land
6 Train
Reflection
In the context of Singapore, our connection to nature is basically a paradox. Singapore is famously known as a “Garden City,” celebrated for its lush greenery and innovative urban landscaping. We are surrounded by greenery: tree-lined expressways, rooftop gardens, etc. However, almost all of it exists within the logic of urban design and is second to economic function e.g. once thriving natural landscapes here have been cleared to make way for urban development. This contradiction is what I wanted to explore in this poem, and what that means for our connection to the natural world. In that sense this poem is one of juxtapositions between natural elements and artificial constructs. Writing the poem, I found myself navigating a delicate balance. I didn’t want to romanticize the past knowing nostalgia often obscures the complexities of history and the necessity of progress. Singapore’s rapid urbanisation since independence has brought tremendous development and improved living standards, yet it has also meant the loss or alteration of many natural landscapes and traditional ways of life. To manage this, I focused on capturing both presence and absence to show how nature is still abundantly present while acknowledging what has been changed/lost. “Unnatural” nature, if you will. The poem being of contradictions without resolving them neatly also invited readers to reflect on their own relationship with nature and urbanisation as it did not offer a singular viewpoint. One could view it as a tale of nature’s quiet resilience despite urban control and transformation, or one could view it as the slow erosion of ‘true’ nature. Through this approach, I sought to honestly engage with Singapore’s evolving landscape by recognizing progress and loss as intertwined parts of the island’s ongoing story in relation to nature.