Stone: The Poems of Ying Pei'an

Local Cultural Award winner Ying Pei'an's latest poetry collection, "Stone", was published in June.

"Stone" contains 30 poems written by Ying Pei'an between 2005 and 2020. Most of the poems are completely different in style from his earlier works, with pure and simple context and philosophical style, allowing readers to deeply understand the author's self-reflection on loneliness, freedom, justice, love, memory, time and even life.

In his preface, Ying Pei'an wrote, "I remain stubborn in my beliefs and ideals." His poem of the same name, "Stone," uses the French philosopher Camus's Sisyphus as a metaphor:
"I've been pushing you up the mountain from the bottom of the mountain with great difficulty, knowing that you'll roll back down again and again..."
“…No one understands the everlasting love we share, the intimacy of our skin. No one understands that sticking close to you day and night, fighting this absurdity, is the meaning of our existence.”

Time is unpredictable and changeable, but what remains unchanged is Ying Pei'an's rock-hard creative vitality and his views and persistence on poetry and poets from beginning to end.

Cover designer A Gao used small stones instead of words to arrange them into a poetic image, symbolizing that the idea of ​​poetry transcends language and echoing the author's unique poetic world.

Ying Pei'an's latest poetry collection, "Stones," is undoubtedly the most "anti-epidemic" work of the year.

Yingpeian

A 2003 Cultural Medallion winner, he was the inaugural Writer-in-Residence at Nanyang Technological University in 2013, and in October of that year was awarded the Southeast Asian Literary Prize. In 2018, he was selected as a pioneer writer in the Writers of the Year selection.

He has published 28 works. His novel A Man Like Me won the 1987/88 Book Award, The Turmoil won the 2004 Singapore Literature Award, Two or Three Things About Myself won the 2008 Singapore Literature Award, The Studio won the 2012 Singapore Literature Award, The Costumes won the 2016 Singapore Literature Award, and The Colour of Dusk was selected as the 2019 Lianhe Zaobao Book of the Year.

With the exception of The Colour of Dusk, all of Ying Pei-an's published novels are available in English translation. The Studio was published in Italian in October 2013 and was adapted into a stage play in 2017, opening the Singapore International Arts Festival that year.