This week our writers bring you the latest news from China and the United Kingdom. In China, hundreds of writers and critics have attended the Hubei International Literature Week and Poetry Festival whilst in the United Kingdom, the life and work of Nobel prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney was celebrated in a film. Read on to find out more!
Xiao Yue Shan, Assistant Blog Editor, reporting from China
“between the metaphors of intertwining language / is evidence that I live on this land / for poetry”
So go the lines of 谢克强 Xie Keqiang, one of the many renowned poets of Hubei, a central province settled in the basin of the Yangtze River. Wuhan, its capital, has long been located in the national body of literature as a poetic muse, one especially vital in Chinese literature which observes so closely the paradigms of space and narrations of home. From the ancient verses of Li Bai and Cui Hao to the contemporary lines of 张执浩 Zhang Zhihao, elements of this river-city resound in a lifeline that threads the Chinese poetic canon, same as the water threads the land.
From November 25 to December 1, Wuhan hosted the annual Hubei International Literature Week and Poetry Festival, an event that gathered hundreds of Chinese and international writers and critics to discuss and share the gifts of poetry made public. In a series of talks, readings, dialogues, and performances, poets took the stage to read their work and openly contemplate the urgent necessity for this work.
A major happening was the awarding of the 11th Wen Yiduo Poetry Award, named after the Hubei poet whose work brought together music, painting, and architecture in highly formal literary structures. The award went to poet 姜念光 Jiang Nianguang, as the judges praised his poems’ ability to traverse common thoughts and language to arrive at revelations. In his acceptance speech, Jiang reiterated this concern of poets to observe the platitudinous, and to derive poetry from it through a continuous interrogation of language.
Other fascinating talks included 方文山 Fang Wenshan, a lyricist, discussing the relationship between popular songs and classic poetry in dialogue with 阎志 Yan Zhi. Women poets 颜艾琳 Yen Ailin and 余幼幼 Yu Youyou talked about the implications and advances of femininity in poetry. German poet Ernest Wichner, Nigerian poet Ijeoma Umebinyuo, Japanese poet 田原 Tahara, and Serbian poet Anna Ristović were present to read their work and discuss their practices.
Chinese poets are all, to one degree or another, haunted by the past. A prevalent concern of Hubei poets is an extrication from influence, in which an inheritance of poetics is constantly informing the contemporary. In this continual search for identity and originality, the poems that reflect their time and place survive the menial to establish themselves within this long-standing heritage. Yan Zhi, the curator of this event, stated that when poets arrive in Wuhan, they return “to their poetic homeland.” It is good to know that coming back home is also a chance to infuse it with new life.
Sarah Moore, Assistant Blog Editor, reporting from the United Kingdom
This week, Irish Nobel prize-winning author Seamus Heaney was celebrated in a film documentary, “Seamus Heaney and the Music of What Happens“, broadcast on BBC Two. Heaney, who passed away in 2013, was born in County Derry in Ireland and rose to fame after the publication of Death of a Naturalist in 1966 to become one of Ireland’s most important national poets. The national pride, and love, felt towards him is demonstrated at one point in the film when 80,000 football fans at Croke Park, Dublin held a minute’s silence the week of his death, before breaking into spontaneous applause: “I can think of no other country where a football ground would have a minute’s silence and cheer a poet,” says his widow, Marie.
The title is taken from Heaney’s poem, “Song” and the film is an immensely moving tribute to his work, as well as an intimately human glimpse into his person and his relationships with his friends and family. There are many wonderful interviews with Marie, his three children, his great friend and poet Michael Longley, poet Paul Muldoon, Helen Vendler, and contemporary poets whom he influenced, such as poet and The New Yorker poetry editor, Kevin Young and previous US Poet Laureate, Tracy K. Smith. The film moves chronologically through his life, from his time as a student in Belfast, through the Troubles, his move with his family to Wicklow, then Dublin, then to his teaching post at Harvard. The politics of his poetry are present throughout, with incredible archive footage of Belfast in the 1970s and ’80s. Yet, the personal is always there too. Marie reveals a notebook of all the love poems Heaney had written for her, which he handwrote and gave to her as a Christmas present one year. After reciting one of them, “Tate’s Avenue,” aloud, she immediately says “I shouldn’t have read it”, both crying and smiling. She continues: “It’s a beautiful poem.”
Song
A rowan like a lipsticked girl.
Between the by-road and the main road
Alder trees at a wet and dripping distance
Stand off among the rushes.
There are the mud-flowers of dialect
And the immortelles of perfect pitch
And that moment when the bird sings very close
To the music of what happens.
*****
Read more on the Asymptote blog: