Poetry and Labour(s): Chinese Workers’ Poetry from the Cultural Revolution to the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

This paper looks at two different manifestations of workers’ poetry as a literary tradition: the poetry of workers, peasants and soldiers (gongnongbing 工农兵) and migrant workers’ poetry (dagong shige 打工诗歌) Through a comparison between three issues of Shikan 诗刊 (Poetry Monthly) from 1976 and an anthology of migrant worker’s poetry published in 2007, this study explores some of the most relevant differences between the two in terms of aesthetics and content, before addressing questions about the shifts in the positioning of workers’ poetry vis-à-vis the political and literary authority in China.