The Planners
About the Poet
- Name: Boey Kim Cheng
- Born: 1965 in Singapore
- Background: Chinese descent, now an Australian citizen
Achievements:
- Published four poetry collections
- Received the National Arts Council Young Artist Award in 1996
- Co-editor of Contemporary Asian Australian Poets (2014)
Career:
- Taught at the University of Newcastle, Australia for 13 years
- Currently an Associate Professor and Head of the English Department at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Poem Overview
- Title: The Planners
- Theme: The poem criticizes the rapid modernization and urban planning in Singapore, focusing on the loss of history, nature, and human connection due to structured city development.
- Form: Free verse, allowing the poet to express emotions freely without a fixed structure.
- Tone: Sarcastic and melancholic, reflecting the poet’s disapproval of planners and sadness over lost heritage.
- Setting: Modern Singapore, representing fast-paced urban development.
Key Themes
1. Modernization vs. Heritage:
- The planners erase history and nature to create a modern city, ignoring emotional and cultural attachments.
2. Loss of Identity:
- The poet feels disconnected from the new city, as familiar landmarks are replaced by uniform structures.
3. Criticism of Urban Planning:
- The planners prioritize perfection and profit over human needs and environmental concerns.
4. Emotional Numbness:
- The poet’s heart is unable to feel or create poetry due to the cold, calculated changes in the city.
Structure and Style
- Free Verse: No fixed rhyme or meter, reflecting the poet’s free expression of frustration.
- Imagery: Vivid images of buildings, roads, and dental work to show the mechanical nature of planning.
Metaphors:
- Dentistry: Planners “knock off useless blocks” and “plug gaps with gleaming gold,” like dentists fixing teeth, symbolizing artificial perfection.
- Anaesthesia, Amnesia, Hypnosis: Represent how planners numb people’s emotions, erase memories, and manipulate them into accepting changes.
Alliteration: Examples like “permutations of possibilities” and “gleaming gold” create a musical effect and emphasize key ideas.
Repetition: The word “they” is repeated to highlight the planners’ dominance and anonymity.
Key Vocabulary
- Permutation: Variations or arrangements of things.
- Blemishes: Flaws or imperfections.
- Dexterity: Skill, especially in using hands.
- Anaesthesia: Temporary loss of sensation, symbolizing emotional numbness.
- Amnesia: Loss of memory, symbolizing forgetting the past.
- Hypnosis: A trance-like state, symbolizing manipulation of people’s thoughts.
- Fossil: Remains of the past, symbolizing old structures or history.
- Blueprint: A plan, symbolizing the planners’ vision for the future.
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