He is famous for being prominent writer in producing significant amount of works mostly Singaporean-Malaysian playwrights. He used simple English as his poetic technique and included everyday imagery. He included the “Singlish” language in his plays entitled “Cook a Pot of Curry” to connect the social class in Singapore. His poem, “Neighbours” is about the life of uneducated settlers in Singapore. He included many shrewd and unwise behaviors of the lower class Singaporeans such as parents letting their children to eat instant noodles every day after school, parents whom wearing inappropriate clothes in everyday lives and modern parents whom cannot deal with their children. In the final lines of the poem, Sa’at wrote an interesting issue that neighborhoods in both Singapore and Malaysia are usually being hypocrites and never shown any trust with each other. Alfian Sa’at wrote this poem to help Singaporeans and Malaysians to be aware in living in peace and harmonious …show more content…
In the old days, the first and second generations commonly discuss the culture and social issues in Singapore. They shared their inputs and views on what they think on living as Singaporeans. Every nation will experience the racial issue and Singapore is not an exception. This is due to the cultural differences and variety of people as well as diversity of languages. Thus, poets will express their emotions, thoughts and feelings regarding on what they have going through such experiences by using creative writings. For example, the leading issue of riot and rebellion in the late 1960s have been discussed in a poem by Lee Tzu Pheng’s My Country My People published in 1979. This poem discusses the common terms used back in the old days like “boom of babies”, “milli-mini-flats”, “Lion City”, and “multi-mini-society”. This shows that earlier writers were inclined in instilling historical facts in their writings. On the other hand, some earlier writers wrote about Singapore’s identity such as Edwin Thumboo’s Ulysess By The Merlion (1977), Arthur Yap’s The Coffee House, Cockpit Hotel and Robert Yeo’s Coming Home Baby (1971) and so on. Despite that there are many poets whom prefer to write poems in expressing and appreciating their identity, reciting these poems will never get dull because different writers have different