Lawrence Ypil

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Lawrence Lacambra Ypil is a poet and nonfiction writer from Cebu, Philippines. Ypil is currently a Lecturer at Yale-NUS.[1]

He earned his first Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing (Poetry) while on a Fulbright fellowship at Washington University in St Louis, and another MFA in Non-Fiction Writing from the Iowa Writers' Workshop.[1]

The Highest Hiding Place: Poems won the 2011 Madrigal-Gonzalez First Book Award and was a finalist for the Gintong Aklat Awards in 2010.[2]

Ypil's second book, The Experiment of the Tropics was the co-winner of the 1st Gaudy Boy Poetry Book Prize (with Jenifer Sang Eun Park's Autobiography of A Horse: A Poem). It was also a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards in Gay Poetry[3] and on the Editor's Long List for The Believer Book Awards in 2019.[4] The book examines archival photographs of Ypil's hometown, Cebu, during the American Period. Ypil describes the process of writing this book as revealing both historical place and himself: "By looking at the photographs, I ended up looking through them, and eventually discovered myself. It felt like looking at beautiful, deep, dark mirrors."[5]

Books[edit]

  • The Highest Hiding Place: Poems (2009)
  • The Experiment of the Tropics: Poems ISBN 978-0982814253 (2019)

Critical reception[edit]

A review in Singapore Unbound says: "The Experiment of the Tropics is a meditation on the nature of cities, the revelatory power of photography, and the startling capacity of poetry to cut into the violent but redemptive parts of history."[6]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b "Lawrence Lacambra Ypil". www.yale-nus.edu.sg. Retrieved 2020-05-20.
  2. ^ "The Highest Hiding Place". www.goodreads.com. Retrieved 2020-05-20.
  3. ^ Hart, Michelle (2020-03-10). "Here are the Finalists For the 2020 Lambda Literary Awards". Oprah Magazine. Retrieved 2020-05-20.
  4. ^ "The Believer Book Awards: Editors' Longlists". Believer Magazine. Retrieved 2020-05-20.
  5. ^ Casal, Chang (Apr 24, 2020). "Lawrence Ypil: 'Just because there's some kind of drama, doesn't automatically make it a poem'". CNN Philippines Life. Archived from the original on April 28, 2020. Retrieved May 20, 2020.
  6. ^ "Gaudy Boy". Singapore Unbound. Retrieved 28 May 2020.