Lee Tzu Pheng

Last updated
Anne Lee Tzu Pheng
BornLee Tzu Pheng
(1946-05-13) May 13, 1946 (age 77)
Singapore
OccupationPoet, former English lecturer
LanguageEnglish
Nationality Singaporean
Education Raffles Girls' Secondary School
Alma mater University of Singapore (Ph.D)
Spouse
Ban Kah Choon
(divorced)
Children1

Anne Lee Tzu Pheng (born May 13, 1946) is a Singaporean poet. She has five volumes of poems to her name; of these, the first three, Prospect of a Drowning (1980), Against the Next Wave (1988) and The Brink of An Amen (1991) were winners of the National Book Development Council of Singapore (NBDCS) Award. After converting to Catholicism, Lee Tzu Pheng added Anne to her name to reflect her new faith. [1]

Contents

Life and career

Born in Singapore (while it was under British rule), Lee Tzu Pheng was educated at Raffles Girls' Secondary School. She has a Ph.D. in English from the University of Singapore in 1973, from where she retired as a Senior Lecturer in its English Department. She is divorced from her ex-husband, Ban Kah Choon (who was once Head of English, National University of Singapore), and has one daughter, Jane Ban Li Hian.

Style of writing

Lee's poetry is meditative and lyrical in nature and with themes such as the individual's search for identity and larger unifying humanity in Against the Next Wave (1988) and The Brink of an Amen (1991). Her later poetry increasingly questions faith and religion, evident in her work, Lambada by Galilee (1999). However, her most anthologised work to date is an early poem, My Country and My People (1976), which expresses her ambivalent attitude towards patriotism and nationhood. For Lee, more often than not, poetry is an expression of the poet's experiences in life.

Works

Like Edwin Thumboo, Lee is often seen as one of a generation of "nation-building" English writers in Singapore, whose work in the '50s-'70s questioned the identity of the newly independent nation. One of her early poems, "My Country, My People", was banned by the Singapore government due to fears that her reference to her "brown-skinned neighbours" would offend the Malay community of Singapore. Another early poem, "Bukit Timah, Singapore" was at one point included in an international selection of poetry for O-level literature students. Later poems heavily reference her Catholic faith. [1] In 2014, she was inducted into the Singapore Women's Hall of Fame. [1]

Poetry collections

Awards

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stevie Smith</span> English poet and novelist (1902–1971)

Florence Margaret Smith, known as Stevie Smith, was an English poet and novelist. She won the Cholmondeley Award and was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. A play, Stevie by Hugh Whitemore, based on her life, was adapted into a film starring Glenda Jackson.

Lyn Hejinian is an American poet, essayist, translator and publisher. She is often associated with the Language poets and is known for her landmark work My Life, as well as her book of essays, The Language of Inquiry.

John Kinsella is an Australian poet, novelist, critic, essayist and editor. His writing is strongly influenced by landscape, and he espouses an "international regionalism" in his approach to place. He has also frequently worked in collaboration with other writers, artists and musicians.

Catherine Lim Poh Imm is a Singaporean fiction author known for writing about Singapore society and of themes of traditional Chinese culture. Hailed as the "doyenne of Singapore writers", Lim has published nine collections of short stories, five novels, two poetry collections, and numerous political commentaries to date. Her social commentary in 1994, titled The PAP and the people - A Great Affective Divide and published in The Straits Times, criticised the ruling political party's agendas.

The literature of Singapore comprises a collection of literary works by Singaporeans. It is written chiefly in the country's four official languages: English, Malay, Standard Mandarin and Tamil.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shirley Geok-lin Lim</span> American poet (born 1944)

Shirley Geok-lin Lim is an American writer of poetry, fiction, and criticism. She was both the first woman and the first Asian person to be awarded Commonwealth Poetry Prize for her first poetry collection, Crossing The Peninsula, which she published in 1980. In 1997, she received the American Book Award for her memoir, Among the White Moon Faces.

Edwin Nadason Thumboo B.B.M. is a Singaporean poet and academic who is regarded as one of the pioneers of English literature in Singapore.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Imtiaz Dharker</span> Pakistan-born British poet, artist, and video film maker

Imtiaz Dharker is a Pakistan-born British poet, artist, and video film maker. She won the Queen's Gold Medal for her English poetry and was appointed Chancellor of Newcastle University from January 2020.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elaine Feinstein</span> English poet and writer (1930–2019)

Elaine Feinstein FRSL was an English poet, novelist, short-story writer, playwright, biographer and translator. She joined the Council of the Royal Society of Literature in 2007.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daren Shiau</span>

Daren Shiau, BBM, PBM, is a Singaporean novelist, poet, conservationist, and lawyer in private practice qualified in Singapore, England and Wales. He is an author of five books.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ng Yi Sheng</span> Singaporean writer

Ng Yi Sheng is a Singaporean gay writer. He has published a collection of his poems entitled last boy, which won the Singapore Literature Prize, and a documentary book on gay, lesbian and bisexual Singaporeans called SQ21: Singapore Queers in the 21st Century in 2006.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wang Ping (author)</span> American poet

Wang Ping is a Chinese American professor, poet, writer, photographer, performance and multimedia artist. Her publications have been translated into multiple languages and include poetry, short stories, novels, cultural studies, and children's stories. Her multimedia exhibitions address global themes of industrialization, the environment, interdependency, and the people.

Gwee Li Sui is an acclaimed bestselling writer in Singapore. He works in poetry, comics, non-fiction, criticism, and translation. He is the author of Spiaking Singlish, possibly the first book on Singlish written entirely in Singlish, complete with colloquial spelling.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kim Hyesoon</span> South Korean poet

Kim Hyesoon (Korean: 김혜순) is a South Korean poet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Colin Tan</span> Singaporean technology entrepreneur and poet

Colin Gerard Tan is a Singaporean technology entrepreneur and poet. His works have been performed in Australia and the United Kingdom, where he did his postgraduate studies at Cambridge. He is the founder of Rentlord, one of the earliest fully online property management portals in the UK allowing landlords and tenants to manage every aspect of a property tenancy over the internet.

Writing in Asia Series was a series of books of Asian writing published from 1966 to 1996 by Heinemann Educational Books (Asia) Ltd, a subsidiary of Heinemann, London. Initiated and mainly edited by Leon Comber, the series brought attention to various Asian Anglophone writers, like Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Western writers based in Asia like Austin Coates and W. Somerset Maugham and modern and classic stories and novels in English translation from the Malay, Indonesian, Thai and more. The series is also credited with contributing prominently to creative writing and the creation of a shared regional identity amongst English-language writers of Southeast Asia. After publishing more than 110 titles, the series folded after Heinemann Asia was taken over by a parent group of publishers and Comber left.

Joshua Ip is a Singaporean poet, and writer.

Heng Siok Tian is a Singaporean poet and educator. She has published five volumes of poetry: Crossing the Chopsticks and Other Poems (1993), My City, My Canvas (1999), Contouring (2004), Is My Body a Myth (2011) and Mixing Tongues (2011).

Aaron Shahril Yusoff Maniam is a poet and civil servant.

Betty Lou Shipley was the twelfth poet laureate of the state of Oklahoma. Shipley's term as laureate was cut short by her death. Along with authoring three books of poetry, Shipley was the poetry editor for Byline Magazine and operator of Full Count Press and, later, Broncho Press.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Anee Lee Tzu Pheng". Singapore Women's Hall of Fame. Archived from the original on 7 October 2015. Retrieved 6 October 2015.

Infopedia (National Library)