Edwin Thumboo

Edwin Nadason Thumboo B.B.M. is a Singaporean poet and academic who is regarded as one of the pioneers of English literature in Singapore.

Edwin Thumboo, born in Singapore onNovember 1933, was the eldest of eight children of a Tamil schoolteacher and a Teochew ChinesePeranakan housewife from a Singaporean merchant family. He and his siblings grew up speaking English and Teochew. The family was financially comfortable their home in Mandai was the only one in the neighbourhood with electricity. Because of his mixed parentage, as a child he was sometimes called names and marginalized. This was said to have fostered determination and selfrespect in him. He completed his primary education at Pasir Panjang Primary School in 1940. During the Japanese occupation of Singapore , he helped his family by selling cakes, tending goats, and working as a salesboy. Following the war, he studied at Monks Hill Secondary School and Victoria School . It was at the latter place that he began writing poetry at the age ofyears, encouraged by the senior English master Shamus Frazer. Thumboo considers Frazer his spiritual father, and late

Source: Wikipedia