Lew Poo Chan, better known by her pen name Dan Ying, is widely acclaimed in the international literary community as one of the world’s major Chinese woman poets. Born in Perak and educated in Malaysia, Taiwan and the USA, the Chinese language educator made Singapore her home in the ’70s. Over the decades, she has forged a literary oeuvre of subtle and profound works influenced by classical Chinese poetry and Buddhist and Taoist philosophies, expressing the poet’s inner world in simple, graceful language rich in emotion, metaphor and meaning. Her many literary prizes include two National Book Development Council of Singapore Awards for poetry, the 1995 Southeast Asia Write Award and the 1996 Cultural Medallion.
