Xi Chuan at the Copenhagen International Literature Festival

The Writing China blog caught up with Xi Chuan (and Fan Wen 范稳 and Wang Gang 王刚) at the Copenhagen International Literature Festival, and has posted their replies to a brief questionnaire. Here’s an excerpt from what Xi Chuan had to say:

 

on STYLE: Earlier I wrote lyrical poems, now I just write texts embodying something not poetic. It’s more like poetic notes. I call it ‘poessay’ (散文诗), because it’s somewhere between poetry and essay.
on CHINESE AND EUROPEAN LITERATURE: I once met Doris Lessing. She asked me about the Cultural Revolution and I in turn asked her about European literature. She said that after 1989 it had become less experimental because of the need to deal with real social problems. I also feel that I can’t follow others, but my work has to relate to reality even if that reality is a disaster.
on TRANSLATION: When I translated the Polish writer Czeslaw Milosz, I didn’t use a dictionary, instead I asked my Polish friends whenever there was something I didn’t understand.
on THE UNIVERSAL POET: Being a poet means you have to make sacrifices. Both in China and Denmark. As the American poet Robert Frost has it: “To take the road less travelled by.”

Click on the image above for the full piece.