Arthur Yap (b. 1943) is arguably the finest poet to emerge from Singapore. He was educated at the University of Singapore and the University of Leeds in England, and obtained his PhD from the National University of Singapore. He has taught in various institutions, including the NUS. Poets are authors of poems, or of other forms of poetry such as dramatic verse. ... The National University of Singapores (Abbreviated NUS; Chinese: 新加坡国立大学; Abbreviated 国大) flagship Kent Ridge campus is located in the southwest of the Republic of Singapore at Kent Ridge, bounded by the Ayer Rajah Expressway (AYE), Clementi Road, Buona Vista Road and Kent Ridge Park, with an area of approximately 1. ... Parkinson Building, University of Leeds The University of Leeds, England, is one of the largest universities in the United Kingdom and the most popular by applicants, with 52,444 applicants in 2003 for 7,228 places (UCAS). ... Royal motto (French): Dieu et mon droit (Translated: God and my right) Englands location within the UK Official language English de facto Capital London de facto Largest city London Area - Total Ranked 1st UK 130,395 km² Population - Total (mid-2004) - Density Ranked 1st UK 50. ... The National University of Singapore (Abbreviation: NUS; Chinese: 新加坡国立大学; pinyin: Xīnjiāpō Guólì Dàxué; Abbreviated 国大; Malay: Universiti Nasional Singapura; Tamil: சிங்கப்பூர் தேசிய பல்கலைக்) is Singapores oldest university, and remains the largest in the country in terms of student enrolment and curriculum offered. ...

His first collection of poems, Only Lines, was published in 1971, for which he received the National Book Development Council of Singapore’s first award for poetry in 1976. He also received the Council’s award for Down the Line in 1982 and Man Snake Apple in 1988. In 1983, he was awarded the Southeast Asia Write Award in Bangkok and the Cultural Medallion for Literature in Singapore. His poems have also been translated into Japanese, Mandarin and Malay, and were collected in The Space of City Trees: Selected Poems in 2000.

Yap’s poetry is distinctive for an unusual linguistic playfulness and subtlety that is able to bridge the rhythms of Singlish with the precision of acrolectic English. Unsurprisingly, the craft of Yap’s voice has the admiration of other writers. Anthony Burgess has written that he encountered Down the Line "with elation and occasional awe", while D. J. Enright has praised Yap’s "sophisticated cosmopolitan intelligence". The Oxford Companion to 20th-Century Poetry describes Yap’s poems as "original, but... demanding: elliptical, dense, dry, sometimes droll. At their best, they shuttle between playfulness and sobriety and are alert to the rhythms and contours of the natural and the peopled landscape, seasoning insight with compassion." Although never as public a figure in Singapore literature as Edwin Thumboo or even Lee Tzu Pheng, Yap has been influential among the younger generations of Singapore writers, including Heng Siok Tian, Toh Hsien Min and Cyril Wong; the former two were students under him. Singlish, a portmanteau of the words Singaporean and English, is the English-based creole spoken colloquially in Singapore. ... Anthony Burgess (1917-1993) was an English novelist and critic. ... Dennis Joseph Enright (March 11, 1920 – December 31, 2002) was a British academic, poet, novelist and critic, and general man of letters. ... Cyril Wong is the author of four collections of poetry: squatting quietly, the end of his orbit, below: absence and unmarked treasure. ...

Yap is also an artist who has held seven solo exhibitions in Singapore as well as participated in group exhibitions in Malaysia, Thailand and Australia.