85, and not afraid to talk about young love

Pioneer writer Robert Yeo's new work dives back in time to his romance with a Frenchwoman while he was a student in Britain

- Shawn Hoo

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 Sunday Times from his Housing Board flat in Toa Payoh, lined methodically with shelves of letters, manuscripts, news clippings and first editions.

He had the love poems in A Colette Sequence And Other Poems (2025) typed up long ago, but had shelved them away from prying eyes until now.

There is no embarrassment now, Yeo says, as he looks back at these poems of a spring date and unrequited affection. “It’s cliche, but it makes me feel that I’m recovering something from my earlier years which I didn’t think was worth recovering.”

The love poems are not for his wife of 51 years Esther Leong, whom Yeo lives with, but an earlier, more fleeting love.

Yeo met the eponymous Frenchwoman Colette Veschambre in 1966, when he was pursuing his master’s degree in Britain. He compares Colette - who was working as an au pair — to another unforgettable sight he encountered in Cornwall, the majestic Tintagel Castle.