Last Boy scores top honours for poet

WRITER Ng Yi-Sheng, 28, is this year's Singapore Literature Prize winner in the English category.

According to the National Book Development Council, which organises the awards, he is the youngest-ever recipient of the $10,000 top local literature prize, which has been awarded biennially since 1992.

He received it last night from Dr Vivian Balakrishnan, Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports, in a ceremony at The Arts House.

Ng, a full-time writer, beat four others with his debut poetry collection, Last Boy.

The other contenders were poetry collection Five Right Angles by Aaron Lee and short story collections Rainbows In Braille by Elmo Jayawardena, The Lies That Build A Marriage by Suchen Christine Lim, and Lions In Winter by Wena Poon.

Says Ng of his prize: 'I was pretty sure I was not going to get it, as I was going up against such experienced writers as Suchen Christine Lim and Elmo Jayawardena.'

Lim won the inaugural prize in 1992 and Jayawardena, a Sri Lankan citizen and Singapore permanent resident, won Sri Lanka's Gratiaen Award in 2001.

On his 28th birthday last Tuesday, Ng received the good news in the mail.

He says that Last Boy, published by firstfruits in 2006, spans eight years of his life, with the earliest poem written when he was in his second year at Raffles Junior College. He started seriously working on a collection while studying comparative literature at Columbia University in New York.

'It is the best of eight years. The collection is eclectic as a lot of the poems were created in class and thus derived from different writing exercises,' he says.

'It is really about a person finding himself and defining himself culturally and sexually. That is what a liberal arts education is all about,' he adds with a laugh.

According to the panel of three judges - Associate Professor Rajeev S. Patke and Assistant Professor Gwee Li Sui, both from the National University of Singapore, and Life! arts correspondent Deepika Shetty - the decision to award Ng the prize was unanimous.

Says Prof Patke, head of the panel: 'We thought it the most original and lively of the entries. It is exuberant, cheeky and is not afraid to take risks.'

But Ng thinks that some books that were not shortlisted for the prize this year are better than his entry. He cites two works by Cyril Wong, the joint winner of the same prize in 2006.

'I can understand rationally the motivation for not nominating him again, but it really is pai seh (Hokkien for embarrassing) as I feel he is exponentially better than me and yet I am getting twice the prize money he did,' he says of Wong, who split the 2006 award with poet Yong Shu Hoong.

What will Ng do with his prize money? 'I haven't decided, but I am thinking about going for language immersion, most probably in Malay, as it is a part of our culture,' he says.

The Singapore Literature Prize recognises works in English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil. Winners of the top prize of $10,000 in the other categories this year include writers Chia Hwee Pheng and Yeng Pway Ngon, who tied in the Chinese category; poet and novelist Mohamed Latiff Mohamed in the Malay category; and Tamil Murasu news editor K. Kanagalatha in the Tamil category.

Chia, 51, a third-time nominee and a first-time winner, says the award means more to him than the money. Moreover, he is pleased to share the award with Yeng, 61, because he has admired Yeng's work since his teenage years.

This is Yeng's second Singapore Literature Prize win. He first won it in 2004.

Both Chia and Yeng are also Cultural Medallion recipients.