SINGAPORE — What a perfect way to end a Singapore Writers Festival edition with the theme The Prospect Of Beauty — a lively discussion on ugliness.

True Art Is Always Ugly was the proposition for the closing debate last night (Nov 9), but you could also subtitle it Gwee Li Sui and Adrian Tan Combined Are Always Funny.

You can always expect lots of laughs when you’ve got these two funnymen writers holding court, which is exactly what happened as they led their respective teams in a clash of views that was as hilarious as it was confusing.

Thanks to the unanimously loud round of applause, moderator and playwright Eleanor Wong awarded the victory to the ever popular Gwee’s rather soft-spoken “for” team (which included Japan-based Singaporean art writer Darryl Wee of website Blouin Artinfo and Filipino poet Conchitina Cruz, who was told at the very last minute that she was the first ever non-Singapore-based guest to have ever been invited into the annual lion’s den that is the SWF Closing Debate. She looked pretty stunned.)

Still, having been on panel discussions with both Wee (on art writing) and Cruz (on Filipino poets), I was quite pleased with the outcome. Represent!

But to be honest, I was pretty surprised, considering the “against” team’s fiercely outspoken line-up: Aside from Tan, you had *both* Singapore Art Museum’s big boss Susie Lingham and theatre director Loretta Chen. Plus, “true art is always ugly?” Man, that’s a tough statement to defend.

But defend they did as both teams went for the jugular (and went philosophical).

The proposition team laid out its arguments: True art is “against status quo”, “shocking”, “uncomfortable” and not for sale. In other words, ugly. Ugly is just “shorthand for ‘I don’t understand’. Works of the great artists — from Picasso to Alexander Pope — were previously considered all “ugly”. The members of the opposition were all “ugly”. (Ouch!)

The opposition team played up their opposition-ness, labelling Gwee’s team as the “government”. They slowly took apart the entire statement. They accused the pros of making the audience think that love — which is basically what true art was, they say — is ugly and that they’re also elitist, because art can be popular (and beautiful), too. The members of the proposition were *not* ugly. (Hah!)

See how confusing it was?

Still, the debate was good fun — even as there were some rather ugly (or at least not quite-pleasant) moments during the 10-day event, most prominent of which was Singapore Literature Prize (SLP) 2014 shortlisted poet Grace Chia’s accusations of gender bias after the English language poetry award was awarded to two male poets, which resulted in heated discussions online and off.

Nevertheless, SWF 2014 was quite a happening edition that offered a crazy 280 events, saw 15 of the 29 ticketed programmes sold out and 3,200 festival passes snapped up (total audience figures weren’t ready as of press time).

Weekend 2 saw the likes of Paul Theroux, Karen Joy Fowler, Jonathan Lethem, Geoff Dyer, Barry Lopez, Raymond E Feist, in attendance. Alfian Sa’at, Neil Humphreys and Mr Miyagi’s panel on satire was reportedly a laugh-a-minute experience. We’re still waiting for Kevin Kwan to go Crazy Rich Asian on us at SWF but we did have Soy Sauce For Beginners’ Kirstin Chen. And, SLP drama aside, I stand by my point last week about poetry being the biggest winner this year: The verse parade of the first weekend continued with a packed poetry reading event on Wednesday, featuring new Singaporean voices; a spoken word event awesomely titled Agaration Of Empathy; panels on female poets, Filipino poets (ahem), and editors of poetry anthologies and journals, among others; and a couple of book launches.

And even as the “ugly” debate was taking place at the SWF’s main tent, Singaporean poets were in the spotlight at the National Museum’s theatre with the piece Apart. Directed by playwright Joel Tan, it featured Cyril Wong, Tania de Rozario, Pooja Nansi, Joshua Ip and Jollin Tan. Take a bow, guys.

Erm, I meant that in a non-gender-specific way.

And while we’re at it, take a bow, Paul Tan, whose successful tenure as fest director ends (so he can concentrates purely on being NAC’s deputy CEO).

By all accounts, it’s been a thumbs up all around for Tan, who will make way for fellow poet Yeow Kai Chai as SWF moves (back) to The Arts House next year.

Tan’s final words? At the end of Sunday’s debate, he quoted Barry Lopez, who said the most important thing for a writer was to “respect the reader’s intellect and imagination”. Tan said he hoped SWF did exactly that for its audiences.