Raphael Niu

Raphael’s essay on Andrew Marvell’s Selected Poems and Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella was exceptionally and eloquently poised in his observations about these two seminal poets.

His essay, Truth and Reality in Andrew Marvell’s Selected Poems and Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella clearly epitomized good literary writing and was characterized by an unusual degree of refreshing insights. The perceptive links made between the two poets were both convincing and tastefully unexpected revealing original arguments that were based on some very sensitive readings of the texts.

Raphael shared, “For me, the magic of literature inheres in the fact that I carry a piece of every text I encounter with me: the parts of myself that I see in a novel's characters, the pithy line in a poem that unexpectedly comes to mind years later. I am ever grateful to my literature teachers Mrs Nicola Perry, Ms Lye Su-Lin, Ms Chuang Sulynn, Mr James Koh, Ms Nicole Kang, and Ms Afiqah Zamri, who each taught me to look at language and life in a new light. I also want to thank my parents, who by reading to me ever since I could remember, showed me that books could also become my good friends.”