She has five volumes of poems to her name; of these, the first three, Prospect of a Drowning (1980), Against the Next Wave (1988) and The Brink of An Amen (1991) were winners of the National Book Development Council of Singapore (NBDCS) Award.
[1] Born in Singapore (while it was under British rule), Lee Tzu Pheng was educated at Raffles Girls' Secondary School.
Lee's poetry is meditative and lyrical in nature and with themes such as the individual's search for identity and larger unifying humanity in Against the Next Wave (1988) and The Brink of an Amen (1991).
Like Edwin Thumboo, Lee is often seen as one of a generation of "nation-building" English writers in Singapore, whose work in the '50s-'70s questioned the identity of the newly independent nation.
Another early poem, "Bukit Timah, Singapore" was at one point included in an international selection of poetry for O-level literature students.