To Speak the Silenced Issues: Marc Nair and his poems for the muted

Oceans filled with plastic, stereotypes in advertisements, the Syrian refugee crisis, and how we define identity. Some of us do not enjoy being reminded of these things, so we usually push them to the back of our mind. There, they are usually forgotten, silenced, but there are some who still listen and raise awareness to these issues and Marc Nair is one of them. He is a Chinese-Indian poet born and raised in Singapore on a search for identity and a voice, one that should be heard.

On the 19th of January, Marc Nair held a talk in the auditorium for our Writer’s Fortnight Week, where different speakers from talk about their stories, their lives and what they do. The 37-year-old poet titled his talk, “Writing Against”. He told us about the struggles about not being recognized in Singapore and how every time he writes of a city, he finds himself “writing against” it. He explained how “writing against” is his way “of speaking up, speaking out, and speaking into”.

Marc Nair speaking at Tedx Singapore – www.marcnair.com

A Search for Identity

Marc Nair published his first poetry book, Along the Yellow Line, in 2007 and since then, he has had 8 more published. He explores the concept of identity and what it actually is. Based on his foreign roots, people usually ask him where he is from. They assume he is from the UK, France or even from Fiji and over time he realized that “identity is a construct and we have notions of identity, we have notions of what a Singaporean looks like”. Born and raised in Ang Mo Kio, he feels a deep connection to Singapore, but he tends to travel to different places. He said that “we’ve got to spend more time finding ourselves, finding our own voice”.

His second book, Chai, is a book filled with travel poems. His travels have brought him around the world. He has spoken in many different countries and has held talks in many different schools.  On his many trips, he has been inspired to write about the things he has seen and the experiences he has had in different countries, as he said, “real life is often weirder than what we make up”.

One of the photos in Mackerel, his online platform – www.marcnair.com

 

Mackerel in the Deaf Ocean

In 2014, he wanted to have a platform where he could write about the things he saw in his travels He, along with his wife, started Mackerel, a free website dedicated to travel posts and blogs. His posts range from poems to reports on different events of different cultures. He told us in the talk about how the world is starting to become more generic and how “art is becoming homogenous”, or a “meme-fication” as he likes to call it. This platform is his way of being different and spreading awareness about the various problems we face. It is his way of speaking against. Speaking against the injustices, the stereotypes, the memefication of art and the deterioration of culture.

Mackerel is not the only way he tries to spread awareness. He joins in different events and workshops around Singapore. In 2015, he participated in the Edible Art Movement, where artists from all around Singapore made different art pieces on 4 themes, Nostalgia, Soil, Exotic, and Ocean. He wrote different poems for the event expressing Singapore, its culture, and its heritage. Through these different events, he speaks for the silenced and the lost. He speaks to the deaf ocean, with the heart of a mackerel.

 

A poem by Marc Nair showcased in the Edible Art Movement – www.nicolaanthony.wordpress.com

What about us?

The school hosts an assortment of local and college services, Global Concerns (GCs), and Focus Groups. Like Marc Nair, each of these activities promote awareness of certain issues, unfortunately, some see it only as a  school requirement to be complied with. This raises the question: Do we really care? Each GC, Service and Focus Group helps us to become better people, but do we participate for our own benefit and self-image or to fulfill a higher purpose? The school offers a multitude of opportunities, which give us a chance to help.

With these opportunities, why aren’t we doing more Art whether poetry, painting, song, or design is a way of not only expressing ourselves but speaking to others? Marc Nair uses his skills in poetry to speak for the silenced, to speak for those whose voice is not heard. Perhaps the time has come for us to rise up to the challenge and be more involved in each advocacy, caring more for the people we are helping, rather than for ourselves. By doing so, we give a voice to the silenced.