Across wor(l)ds: Ouyang Yu’s transcultural journey in self-translation

Abstract

As a Chinese-Australian poet who straddles the frontier between two identities, Ouyang Yu 歐陽昱 (born in 1955), generates works that portray the interliminal space of the difference, as well as the movement to transcend that difference. His bilingual poetry collection Ziyi ji 自譯集/Self-translation (2012) represents his own manifesto of a hybrid cultural identity and witnesses how the subject tries to “juggle two traditions” (Grutman 2001, 17) by translating himself. By reading Ziyi ji 自譯集/Self-translation (2012), this paper attempts to describe Ouyang’s strategies of re-creating his voice within and through lyrical writing.