A Poetic Revolution in Keywords: On Contemporary Chinese Poetry

Abstract

An individual avant-gardist is his own lawmaker and executioner. He desires no agreement from anyone. He doesn't give a shit about nodding heads. He approves of himself and he completes himself.2-Zhang Jiayan, Low Poetr y in China (7)White sees world in ver y much same terms as Milan Kundera, who has observed that any view that does not allow for shit is mere kitsch, and that existence of shit is incompatible with kind of belief in God and goodness found in orthodox Christianity of kind embraced by such of White's characters as Reverend timothy Calderon. if God is not in or in stan parker's much cited gob of spittle, then He is nowhere. But if we can see God immanent in world, including its spittle and semen, then He also transcends limitations of His creation and our perceptions of it.-John McLaren, Writing in Hope and Fear: Literature as Politics in Postwar Australia (176)WHILE AUSTRALIAN POETRY SEEMS TO HAVE LOST ITS POLITICAL POTENCY, CRITICAL currency, this-worldly relevance, and its capacity for revolution, of any kind, Chinese poetry, in its downward thrust drilling below bottom, has given tired word avant-garde a new life by injecting into it an unprecedented vitality, never seen in its 5000-year history, with and and with rubbish, more evil but more lively and powerful, it seems, than Charles Baudelaire's The Flowers of Evil.3PISS AND SHITIn 2007, when i began translating a number of shit poems by Xu Xiangchou, dubbed leader of lajipai (rubbish group),4 i submitted them everywhere in Australia. result was unsurprising: rejection, rejection, and more rejection. However, mind-shrinking Australian sky was not that uniform; it at least cracked open at two places, magazine-wise and individually. thanks to its current conservative poetry editor,5 Overland-a magazine going strong then but that has since lost its momentum and creative drive, to degree that i no longer read or submit anything to it, ending my fifteen-year-long history of poetry publication (1993-2007) or seventeen-year-long article publication (1993-2009) with that magazine-published an article i wrote on current poetic situation in China.6 And an Australian poet, stephen Brock, in receiving and reading my translations of Xu's poems, responded favorably with words: yes, that's good shit! very rich. shit poetry is really cheering me up,7 with perhaps first Chinese-induced Australian shit poem born, with this comment from him: these are poems/translations (email to author, 7 Feb 2007),8 as follows:i am reading a shit poemby Xu Xiangchoutranslated by ouyang yuwhen my wife texts meto bring toilet paper and salad9However exciting it was, it was not till mid-April 2013 that two shit poems, one by Xu and other by nan Ren, had been accepted,10 all more reason i show one here, written in Chinese by Xu Xiangchou. it's not surprising that poems, in fact none of following poems by other poets, confronting and confrontational, available and accessible only online, have been published in government-sanctioned official magazines or literary journals in China.My poetry Will definitely be Written into shit Book11As long as I persist in going to toilet on a daily basisIn squatting over shit-hole sitting north facing southIn farting a fart before shittingAnd in using my poetry manuscript to wipe my bumsTranslator's note: shice (history book), in Chinese, sounds exactly like shice (shit book).We have seen enough and shit in Western art, starting with Marcel duchamp's urinal, Fountain, through piero Manzoni's the Artist's shit, and Andres serrano's piss Christ, an installation that caused Art Gallery of Victoria to shut down exhibition second day after its opening;12 however, we have so far not seen much of a trace of it in Australian poetry,13 not in its published version nor in its awarded version, except with some lackluster stand-up comedians whose only trick seems to pepper their talk with excremental expressions to make their audience laugh. …