Xiao Kaiyu
(China, 1960)
In today’s Chinese poetry we find some remarkable imagery: Bei Dao’s needle sliding across a tree’s growth rings towards the centre; Duoduo’s plow hung with pearls, Xi Chuan’s humourless monster. Yu Jian, on the other hand, declares war on the metaphor, using language as a self-aware, dangerous caricature which can reduce a human being to substantives particles syllables past time. The poetry of Xiao Kaiyu, settled in Germany in 1997, distinguishes itself from both these contrasting trends.
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From ‘Saturday Night’:
In passing he mentions his mother’s funeral,
many relatives, many firecrackers, many
unknown children, but very little time
spent by relatives around her portrait exchanging grief.
In China, Xiao is considered a ‘narrative’ poet, like Sun Wenbo and others whose work caught on in the 1990s, first in the samizdat circuit, later also in regular publications. Xiao has also made his name as a critic. He says the principal question is what one writes rather than how one writes it, thus firmly distancing himself from the metaphorists and the language-squeezers. What one writes: experienceable and experienced reality, socially and morally committed. Thus in content his poetic creed has much in common with classical Chinese poetry - from which it differs in the form of his poems, which is mostly free verse. However, Xiao’s work may have its roots in a recognizable world, but no more than classical Chinese poetry is it a simple reflection of that world. And apart from the ‘narrative’, there is a lyrical Xiao Kaiyu, in a short poem like ‘Ahh, Mist’, and an imaginative one, in ‘Northern Station’, who feels himself ‘a crowd of people’: ‘I sense there’s another pair of feet in mine’. Xiao Kaiyu is a versatile poet. His work has been translated into German, English, Italian and Dutch.
In passing he mentions his mother’s funeral,
many relatives, many firecrackers, many
unknown children, but very little time
spent by relatives around her portrait exchanging grief.
In China, Xiao is considered a ‘narrative’ poet, like Sun Wenbo and others whose work caught on in the 1990s, first in the samizdat circuit, later also in regular publications. Xiao has also made his name as a critic. He says the principal question is what one writes rather than how one writes it, thus firmly distancing himself from the metaphorists and the language-squeezers. What one writes: experienceable and experienced reality, socially and morally committed. Thus in content his poetic creed has much in common with classical Chinese poetry - from which it differs in the form of his poems, which is mostly free verse. However, Xiao’s work may have its roots in a recognizable world, but no more than classical Chinese poetry is it a simple reflection of that world. And apart from the ‘narrative’, there is a lyrical Xiao Kaiyu, in a short poem like ‘Ahh, Mist’, and an imaginative one, in ‘Northern Station’, who feels himself ‘a crowd of people’: ‘I sense there’s another pair of feet in mine’. Xiao Kaiyu is a versatile poet. His work has been translated into German, English, Italian and Dutch.
Last updated: Aug 30, 2006
© Image: Tineke de Lange
[Xiao Kaiyu took part in the Poetry International Festival Rotterdam 2002. This text was written on that occasion.]
On Lyrikline you can find additional information (in German) about Xiao Kaiyu and hear him read his poems.
On Lyrikline you can find additional information (in German) about Xiao Kaiyu and hear him read his poems.