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Che Qianzi
(China, 1963)
There was a time when Che Qianzi, along with other poets, such as Zhou Yaping, advertised himself as a ‘Language Poet’, with a special interest in the nature of Chinese characters. He displayed no further activism on China’s turbulent poetic scene. His first appearance abroad took place during the Cambridge Conference of Contemporary Poetry in 2002. Simply labelling Che Qianzi as a whimsical poet – as well as a painter and a calligrapher – would not be doing him justice. His whimsicality expresses itself time and again – consistency after all! – in the abruptness of his associations (‘the walnut is a school’), his mixing the abstract and the concrete (‘we have stolen the forbidden’) and in disparate registers of the Chinese language (‘some cover up is searching for the things in its category’). His poetry can be nonsensical, and breathtaking. Che Qianzi’s style is light-footed, but also tenacious and capable of generating a dream-like, unique experience. The linguistic nature of his enterprise – its restrictions and its power – is obvious. Thus he disarms the threat of a tiger hunting a child in the subsequent image: a child with a tiger on a leash. To Che Qianzi, poetry is a game, demanding the seriousness and dedication concomitant to playing a game: ‘my tongue is learned’. [Che Qianzi took part in the Poetry International Festival Rotterdam 2003. This text was written on that occasion.] |
POEMS Che Qianzi |