Wong Wei Cong, London Independent Story Prize 2024 2nd Competition Poetry Finalist 'Manifesto for Metamorphosis'

London Independent Story Prize 2024 2nd Competition Poetry Finalist 'Manifesto for Metamorphosis' by Wong Wei Cong

Can you please tell us about you and your daily life?

I am a practising junior physician, with an interest in emergency and humanitarian medicine. I am finishing my term as a medical officer in the navy, finding respite in the immense quietude of the sea. While similarly tormented by Ishmael's everlasting itch for things remote, (un)fortunately I have yet to sail forbidden seas or land on barbarous coasts, and have to settle with traversing the watery plains of my mind for the satisfaction of that itch.  

When and how did you get into writing?

I got into writing in my college years, during that interminable search for identity. While ambition has since waned, the objectless longing persisted, and with the absurdity of our strivings (including the act of writing) in a fundamentally broken world, with the enormity and emptiness of the listless present, writing is my way of making sense of the world, of salvaging what I can, of maintaining a little piece of dignity and humanity.  

How often do you write? Do you have a writing routine? And what inspires you to write?

Beholden to the infrequent providence of the muses, the birth of a piece of writing starts with an unbidden vision, upon which the mind is held captive, and is released only with its faithful reproduction by the writer in a restless bout of energy. Or so, the shameless excuse for the ignominious lack of a writing routine. 

How does it feel to have your work recognised?

It is nice, especially for such a self-conscious creature as a writer.

What's the best and most challenging thing about writing poetry? 

The most challenging thing about writing a piece is starting it, the process of putting your impeccable vision down in something as temporal and inadequate as words. The best thing about writing a piece is realising the joy in the labour of its revisions, of hearing the sound of words in the right places, of delighting in the associations of ideas that gleefully depart from the Garden of the mind.

How did you develop the idea for your LISP-selected story? Is there a story behind your story? 

The poem is an exploration of the psychological undercurrents of the condition of the modern man, in a world increasingly unmoored from Nature. It is an attempt to navigate the insecurities of one’s existence with the narrative solace of Literature, invoking the myths of transfiguration, stretching from Leda and Daphne to Fox Spirits and the Butterfly Lovers, so as to seek recourse in the ritual cycle of destruction and rebirth. 

- Can you please give us a few tips about writing poetry?

Write out of necessity. Your impetus to write should come from within the deepest recesses of your soul – only you yourself are the judge of the sincerity of your work. The world has much to give, even in its most mundane routines – listen and observe; be humbled by the moments that everyday life brings you; draw from your wanderings, daydreams, epiphanies, memories, ruminations. Writing is a solitary activity. Be comfortable with yourself; regularly till the garden of your soul, and the sweetness of its fruit is its own reward. 

- Lastly, do you recommend the writers submit to LISP?

Of course :)