Cyril Wong

According to the International Examiner, "Cyril Wong mines the contradictions and frustrations of a broader existence with poems that shimmer with language, art, religion, disaster, death, murder, adultery and, of course, love." He has been recognised as Singapore's first truly confessional poet, mainly "on the basis of the brutally candid sexuality in his poetry, along with a barely submerged anxiety over the fragility of human connection and a relentless self-querying; but the label understates Wong's constant evolution". By turns "acerbic and tender, ironic and meditative", the poet "has many styles, all of them limber, which combine the anecdotal and the confessional with the intuitive and the empathetic." His poems are known for their "lyrical intensity" and for "training an almost anthropologically curious eye on the laws and customs of his own family: their strange taciturn ways, their gnomic references to disappointment and guilt, and their penchant for self-delusion." In a way that makes him distinctive within the Singaporean poetry scene, his work possesses "a heightened awareness of the physical body, and a desire to probe its visceral materiality for emotional truths." Ng Yi-Sheng describes that throughout the poet's career, "he has unashamedly presented himself in public as a gay man, winning himself a large LGBT fan base that identifies intimately with his writings on love, depression and antipathy towards his family." Edwin Thumboo has praised Wong's poems for their "remarkable inwardness" and how, "without exception, they leave us with the feeling of subjects – occasion, non-happening, an especially poignant experience – explored to unusual limits." His third collection, below: absence, and its play of presence and absence in the context of Singapore's urbanity and cultural memory, has been described by John Phillips as offering "an affirmation of emptiness in a time and place where this is barely possible."

Born in 1977, Cyril Wong attended Saint Patrick's School, Singapore and Temasek Junior College, before completing a doctoral degree in English literature at the National University of Singapore. His poems have appeared in journals and anthologies around the world, including the Atlanta Review, Fulcrum, Poetry International, Cimarron Review, Prairie Schooner, Poetry New Zealand, MĀNOA, Ambit, Dimsum, Asia Literary Review, The Bungeishichoo (Japanese translation), The Norton Anthology Language for a New Century, and Chinese Erotic Poems by Everyman's Library. He has been a featured poet at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the Hong Kong International Literary Festival, the Sydney Writers' Festival, and the Singapore Writers Festival. TIME magazine (10 December 2007) has written that "his work expands beyond simple sexuality...to embrace themes of love, alienation and human relationships of all kinds." The Straits Times has described the poet like this: "Cyril Wong is a graceful slip of a man, with a quiet air about him. He reads his poetry without drama, like he's just talking to you. But when he reads, the words sent tingles down my spine. His performance made one participant confess he 'peed in his pants'."

Cyril Wong (simplified Chinese: 黄益民 ; traditional Chinese: 黃益民 ; pinyin: Huáng Yì Mín ; born 27 June 1977) is a poet, fictionist and critic.