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Pioneer writer Robert Yeo publishes his adolescent love poems at 85
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Pioneer writer Robert Yeo, 85, has published a suite of love poems he wrote at 27 in A Colette Sequence And Other Poems (2025).
ST PHOTO: DESMOND WEE
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- Robert Yeo, 85, has published love poems for a lost love, Colette Veschambre.
- The book includes new poems, opera excerpts and verses.
- Yeo is using art to combat depression.
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SINGAPORE – At 85, pioneer writer Robert Yeo has published a suite of love poems he wrote at 27 – lines of dewy-eyed longing he did not dare publish as a young man, heart-on-his-sleeve verses which he admits made him feel like an adolescent 17.
“People reading it will cringe, I thought. I really don’t know how people will receive it,” Yeo tells The Straits Times from his Housing Board flat in Toa Payoh, lined methodically with shelves of letters, manuscripts, news clippings and first editions.
