Yang Lian’s exilic poetry: ghost poetics and self-dramatization

ABSTRACT

This dedication was composed by Chinese poet and author Yang Lian and translated by John Minford, then head of the School of Asian Studies at the University of Auckland. It is inscribed upon a stone memorial hewn to resemble the geographical shape of China, dedicated to the victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. The memorial stands outside St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church on Alten Road in Auckland, New Zealand. It was chosen by two Chinese poets, Yang Lian and Gu Cheng, who were then organizing demonstrations against the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) declaration of martial law at the time they were attending an international conference on the non-mainstream Chinese poetry at the University of Auckland. They were denied reentry into China, and their works were blacklisted. The two settled down in New Zealand, and in 1993 Gu murdered his wife and committed suicide, while Yang left his base in Auckland and started his second period of exile elsewhere in Europe.

KEYWORDS:

• Yang Lian
• poetry
• ghost poetics
• self-dramatization
• 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre

Special terms

Table

Notes

1 It is important to note that Yang wrote more than two hundred classical poems before his engagement with modern poetry (Tan 2016, 125).

2 For more information concerning Yang’s dealing with his critiques of the Tiananmen Square Massacre when the poems were published in mainland China, see Edmond (2006).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Victor Mair

Victor Mair is the founder and editor of Sino-Platonic Papers and General Editor of the ABC Chinese Dictionary Series at the University of Hawaii Press. He has been a fellow or visiting professor at the University of Hong Kong (2002–2003), the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, 1998–1999), the Institute for Research in Humanities (Kyoto University, 1995), Duke University (1993–1994), and the National Humanities Center (Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, 1991–1992).

Qing Liao

Qing Liao is MA Student of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at University of Pennsylvania.