Yu Jian: Selected Poems
Yu Jian: Selected Poems
By Yu Jian
Translated by Simon Patton and Naikan Tao
2018
136 pages
ISBN 978-962-7255-46-8
Born in Yunnan province in 1954, Yu Jian has developed a unique poetic voice that has little to do with the cultural centres of Beijing and Shanghai. In 1971, during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), he came across a booklet of classical Chinese poetry hidden away in a remote village temple. This chance discovery ‘ripped the blindfold’ from his eyes and strengthened his desire to become a poet. Despite the fact that he was working as a riveter in a factory at the time, Yu managed to read widely in world literature thanks to the large volume of banned books in circulation underground. For many years he wrote in virtual isolation, but made an unexpected breakthrough in 1986 when his long, rough and tumble ‘stream of life’ poem ‘6 Shangyi Street’ appeared in China’s leading poetry journal. Since then, Yu has gone on to become one of China’s most unlikely contemporary poets, combining a down-to-earth approach with strong interests in wilderness, the loss of local and indigenous ways of life, and a Taoist-inspired mysticism of the ordinary. His numerous books of poetry include Sixty Poems (1989), Naming to a Crow (1993), Note of Anthology (2001), Anthology and Image (2003), and Only the Ocean is as Vast as a Screen (2006). To this day, he continues to live and write in Kunming. This is the first representative selection of his work to appear in English.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Introduction — 7
A Note on the Source of the Poems — 14
The Beer Bottle Top — 16
Event ‧ Digging — 18
In Praise of Labour — 21
Opus 49 — 22
Queen of the Northside Factories — 24
Public Bath — 27
A Stack of Oil-Drums near the Railway Line — 29
Opus 51 — 30
Opus 52 — 32
For My Father — 34
Mouse — 39
Luo Jiasheng — 42
Rivers — 44
Distant Friend — 45
To Have Friends Come from Afar — 47
Opus 60 — 50
6 Shangyi Street — 53
For Yao Fei — 61
Down on the River Bank — 63
Event ‧ Birth — 65
Opus 67 — 69
Running Between Horse — 71
Eagle ‧ A Second Poem — 72
The Naming of a Crow — 73
Bird Sheltering from Rain — 80
Church Visit — 81
Immanuel Kant — 88
Speed — 90
Yunnan Men — 92
Maize Fields — 93
The Grand Canyon of North-East Yunnan — 95
Qingbi Creek, Mount Cang — 96
Thank You, Father — 98
To a Friend — 101
Editing the China New Poem Almanac One Winter — 102
Event ‧ Writing — 103
Goldfish — 106
Vincent van Gogh — 109
Dusk — 112
Threshing — 113
Event ‧ Death of a Palm Tree — 114
Opus 104 — 121
He Came to Pick Me Up in His Black Car … — 122
A Nail Piercing the Sky — 123
Sunday in Cuihu Park — 124
Notes on Translators — 132
Selected Bibliography — 133
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