Review of The Votive Pen: Writings on Edwin Thumboo. Singapore: Penguin Books, 2020. xxiii+249pp. ISBN: 9789814882132.

Biographers are not always seen in a positive light and have often been called names, such as "biografiends", "voyeurs" and "vultures". T.S. Eliot was so sceptical of biography and biographers that as early as 1925, at the age of twenty-seven, he decided not to have a biography of him and left behind a will advising his executors not to facilitate or countenance the writing of his biography. In a backdrop of such widespread cynicism, I have nothing but praise for Nilanjana Sengupta and her recently published biography of Singapore’s preeminent poet, Edwin Thumboo, The Votive Pen. Thumboo is a pioneering figure and stalwart of Singaporean Anglophone literature. He is an arch-poet and culture guru revered by many, and Tommy Koh, Singapore's Ambassador-at-Large, hailed him as the "unofficial Poet Laureate" of the Renaissance City.