Boon Ping Yeo (Singapore)

I graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in English Literature at the National University of Singapore in 2016. In the intervening year, I served as a research assistant for a professor’s monograph, and helped to conduct oral history interviews at Singapore’s archival institution. 

Growing up in a multilingual family, I am interested in the use of “im/proper” English or vernacular in literature, especially in poetry written in post-colonies and across national and cultural boundaries, such as verse by immigrants, stateless poets, migrant workers, and so on. Additionally, my research looks at how postcolonialism has affected attitudes towards the English canon, the commercial circulation of literature and literary prizes etc., and how these paradigmatic shifts influence the reception and production of literary works.

I am immensely grateful to the Ertegun foundation for giving me this opportunity to participate in an interdisciplinary community and to enrol in the University of Oxford for my MSt programme in World Literatures in English. While at Oxford, I hope to grapple more thoroughly with multilingual and transnational poetry, and to explore the relationship between occidental and oriental poetry. I look forward to contributing to the rich academic environment at Ertegun House and Oxford, and, more generally, to making friends and having conversations with the people here!