JACLYN LIM

“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write.” – Virginia Woolf

When I heard the good news that I had been selected for the Arts House Literary Fellowship, the first thing I did was to dig up my old copy of A Room of One’s Own. It must be there somewhere, I thought, as I traced my fingers across book spines arranged in alphabetical order.

It had been so, so long since I had reached for this particular book that I wasn’t quite sure if it would still be there. When Kev and I married, our libraries did too. And in the end, all the hundreds of books that we had recklessly amassed in our youth followed us from home to home.

So I was surprised when I found it, tucked neatly between a Vonnegut (not mine) and Mrs Dalloway. The thin volume with yellowed pages, its cover foxed by the tropical humidity over the years. I realised, with a start, that it was a gift from an ex-boyfriend, back when we both worked in Borders, shelving cookbooks side by side. It made me remember some things best forgotten, but this is not what this post is about. I’ve rambled on, as always.

With the Arts House Literary Fellowship, I get a room of my own. At last. Even if it’s only for three months. My study at home, shared with the kids’ playroom and constantly filled with chatter and clutter, has been less and less conducive for writing these days. When I was writing ASCOE, it was perfect. It held me hostage in the domestic space but it also immersed me in the dreary demands that make up Seok Lin’s life. That story could only have come out of this study.

But now, what next?

Really, I would have been contented with the rented, partitioned backroom of the Eunos industrial unit from which I started @bloomroomsg. But now, they are letting me use the Deputy Speaker’s room at The Arts House — what an honour, what a dream.

More than the money (much appreciated, though, because it will stop me from worrying about it in those weeks), it is the room I yearn for. And so, back to Woolf…

“I told you in the course of this paper that Shakespeare had a sister; but do not look for her in Sir Sidney Lee’s life of the poet. She died young — alas, she never wrote a word. She lies buried where the omnibuses now stop, opposite the Elephant and Castle. Now my belief is that this poet who never wrote a word and was buried at the cross–roads still lives. She lives in you and in me, and in many other women who are not here to–night, for they are washing up the dishes and putting the children to bed. But she lives; for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh.”

Perhaps, for three months, I can take up the opportunity and wash fewer dishes and not put the children to bed for a couple of nights, and try to live and walk among you in the flesh.