The Collected Poems of Arthur Yap
Arthur Yap
Singapore: NUS Press, 2013
ISBN: 9789971696535

Arthur Yap Chioh Hiong (1943-2006) was a Singaporean poet and artist. He held an MA from Leeds and a Ph.D from the National University of Singapore, where he taught in the Department of English Language and Literature from 1979 until 1998. He published a volume of poetry in 1971 under the title Only Lines and later published three more volumes of poetry (Commonplace, Down the Line, and Man Snake Apple) under the Heinemann imprint. His poetry also appears in a variety of periodicals.

The Collected Poems of Arthur Yap gathers the entire corpus of Arthur Yap's poems in a single volume. Yap based his writing on life and events in Singapore, and his contribution to Singapore literature was first acknowledged in 1976, when he won the initial poetry award granted by the National Book Development Council of Singapore for Only Lines. In 1983 he received both the Singapore Cultural Medallion for Literature and the Southeast Asian Write Award. His work is notable for word play, occasional use of the street patois of Singapore, and commentary on the values and priorities expressed by ordinary people in everyday situations.