Ouyang Yu / 欧阳昱

欧阳昱 / Ouyang Yu is a Chinese-born poet, novelist, editor and translator based in Birrarungga/Melbourne. Since arriving in Australia in 1991, he has published over 100 books of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, literary translation and literary criticism in English and Chinese.

His poetry and translations have been included in major Australian collections including, The Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry, The Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature and The turnrow Anthology of Contemporary Australian Poetry.

His acclaimed novels and books of poetry include The Eastern Slope Chronicle (2002), The English Class (2010), The Kingsbury Tales: A Complete Collection (2012), Songs of the Last Chinese Poet (1997) and New and Selected Poems (2004), to name but a small few.

Since February 1996, he has edited Australia’s only Chinese literary journal, Otherland. In 2011 the New York based《明镜》月刊 / Ming Jing monthly nominated him as one of the Top 10 most influential writers of Chinese origin in the Chinese diaspora, the same year he was selected as one of The Age Melbourne’s
‘Top 100’.

For Silent Dialogue / 沉默的对话, Ouyang presents his book installation Three Firsts 2021. Featuring early literary works alongside self-made ‘destroyed works’ and a series of ‘rejected works’ self-published in a limited edition of one, the installation consists of three bodies of work:

• First books published in English featuring Moon Over Melbourne 1995 (poetry), The Eastern Slope Chronicle 2002 (fiction) and Representing the Other: Chinese in Australian Fiction: 1888-1988 2008 (criticism).

• First self-destructed books in Chinese featuring The Limit 2004 (poetry), The Kingsbury Tales 2010 (poetry) and The Angry Wu Zili 1999 (fiction).

• First self-published rejections featuring West of the River 2020 (fiction), Spring Waters: Li Yu, the Emperor of Poetry 2020 (fiction) and Small Says: Words, Stories and Mini-Meditations 2020 (non-fiction).

Above each “First” display is a quotation from Ouyang’s works. Alongside the words is a QR link that takes the viewer to an in-depth online interview with the artist. Here they can continue reading or listen to a reading by Ouyang, complicating (or illuminating) the process of engaging with his works and ideas.

To cultivate a space for deeper reflection about the works and the way we think about literature as an artform, display copies of selected books are also available for viewers to sit and read, as they would in a library.

The project is autobiographical. It explores the life of books – through the migration of the artist’s creative direction over time, the process of self-destruction, transformation and renewal at the heart of the creative process and the experience of migration.

At the same time, the story is universal, encouraging the viewer to think about the life and role of books and literature in society – the way they are understood, consumed and valued.

Ouyang’s single-edition firsts, West of the River, Spring Waters: Li Yu, the Emperor of Poetry and Small Says: Words, Stories and Mini-Meditations, will also be offered for ‘silent auction’. It’s a way for the artist to reject and exclude in the way he has been rejected and excluded while also encouraging the viewer to think about the value of books within the fine arts and literature market context.

There is strictly no photography permitted. This measure is to preserve the intellectual property of the artist's words. However, at a special talk event to be held during the March-June 2022 period, Ouyang will be conducting a special after-dark reading of excerpts from Spring Waters: Li-Yu, the Emperor of Poetry.*

The installation will be on display at Missing Persons art space from 20-23 January 2022 alongside the works of fellow artists 傅红 / Fu Hong, 关伟 / Guan Wei, and Echo Cai / 子轩.

Press the button below to check out the latest Exhibition Program.

ET—1) Ouyang, in his essay for the Silent Dialogue / 沉默的对话 book, writer Nicholas Jose paraphrased you saying: ‘Writing is always incomplete, he suggests because it doesn’t finish with the writing: it continues with a reader responding, incompletely perhaps, and that goes on, endlessly’. (p.30)

It is an attitude which highlights the modesty of your creative outlook and the earnestness of your intertwining of self-transformation with creative practice - something which you allude to in your self-interview ‘Interview with Yu by Ouyang’ (also part of the Silent Dialogue / 沉默的对话 book).

In the text, you cite one of your earliest ‘firsts’ in English, a self-interview in the form of a poem entitled ‘Interview with Yu’, published twenty-five years ago in your book of poetry Moon Over Melbourne and Other Poems (1995). The poem began:

你说你是从中国来的
you said you came from china

是的
i did

但你为什么用英语写作
but why you wrote in english

嗯我想这只是一种偏爱吧
well it’s just a matter of preference i guess

你写什么诗歌小说非小说还是别的东西
what did you write poetry fiction nonfiction or other things

我写了一些诗
i wrote some poems

发表了吗
did you publish any

完全没有
not at all

为什么没有
why not

嗯我也不知道反正我从不投稿
well i don’t know i just never sent them

但你不知道那个说法：不发表，就发霉
but don’t you know that saying: publish or perish

Your creative decision to return to the experimental form of self-interview in the text, albeit reinvented in prose format 25 years later, exemplifies this idea of incompleteness – words or arrangements of words that search for their place in the reader’s response today. Yet as the contemporary ‘Interview with Yu by Ouyang’ continues, one has the sense that at its essence, some things have remained constant. You write:

O Has anything changed much since?
Y Not a lot. Just published a few things. That’s all.

Would you mind please talking a little about the connections between these self-interviews? The idea of self-translation and the spirit of experimentation, which, amongst other things, is the subject of the self-interview and the central preoccupation behind your concept for Three Firsts 2021 (hereafter ‘Three Firsts’) presented here as part of Silent Dialogue / 沉默的对话?

NOTE:—Press the button below to borrow Moon Over Melbourne and Other Poems (1995).

ET––2) I thought we might start from your earliest book, a work of literary criticism, published in English. Namely, your doctoral dissertation Representing the Other: Chinese in Australian Fiction: 1888-1988, submitted in 1994 and later published as a work of non-fiction by Cambria Press in 2008.

In his 2009 review of the book, the poet and critic Steve Brock described it as the first comprehensive evaluation of representations of Chinese in Australian fiction, a significant contribution to Australian literary studies. Brock described the book's central premise thus:

The main theoretical basis for the study is the swinging pendulum of Orientalism, from its negative to positive depictions of the Other. Yu argues convincingly for the retention of the categories 'racism' and 'stereotype' in his analysis, and by keeping theoretical deliberations to a minimum, he allows adequate space to discuss the novels, poems and literary debates that have shaped representations of Chinese over a century. His clarity of language and argument make the book a pleasure to read, and stylistically, it will appeal both to the specialist and general reader. While negative stereotypes abound and persistent in Australian fiction from 1888 to 1988 and beyond, there are a minority of writers throughout who have defied the dominant discourse and engaged in an intelligent intercultural dialogue with China.

Later in his review, Brock went on to say: 

While reading Chinese in Australian Fiction, I also found many resonances with the contemporary political landscape, with disproportionate concern in the community and media about a resurgence in boat people, debate about takeovers in the commodity sector by Chinese owned businesses, and suspicions by political commentators about the extent of the Rudd Government’s relations with China. This makes Chinese in Australian Fiction an all the more timely contribution to the contemporary debate about Australia’s complex relationship with China, as explored through literary texts.

In the present day, it seems to me that this book remains deeply relevant – not least due to the escalating incidences of anti-Asian racism and the general feeling of Sinophobia felt since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Would you please talk a little about the PhD, particularly its later life as a published book and in the context of its selection as one of three works part of this segment of the Three Firsts project?

NOTE:—To continue reading Brock’s 2008 Interview with Ouyang, press the button below.

ET—3) I’d like to turn now to Moon Over Melbourne 1995. Published in 1995 amidst a groundswell of anti-Asian and anti-multiculturalism rhetoric, it was a brave and singular work that confronted the superiority of nostalgic, Anglo-centric images of ‘Australianness’.

In 1997, the same year that Hanson launched her One Nation Political Party, ABC Radio National’s ‘Poetic’ program aired ‘Ouyang Yu’, an episode featuring a series of readings of your poems by you and the actor Brant Eustace.

Framed by soundscapes and interviews with you, the episode explored the poems' themes, which range from bicultural identity, Chinese ethnicity, multiculturalism and the sense of displacement experienced by migrants in urban Australia.

Moon Over Melbourne opened the episode and became the starting point for the conversation. As the scholar Prithvi Varatharajan writes in his excellent critique of the program episode:

The poet experiences a sense of temporal as well as spatial dislocation— ‘in a night without time’—as the city of Melbourne reminds him of Chinese landscapes and poetry from across thousands of years. Although the poem is set in Melbourne, the city is experienced as being less significant to the poet than China, with its long cultural history that feels present to him; it is for this reason that in the print version of the poem ‘Chinese’ is capitalised while ‘melbourne’ and ‘australia’ are relegated to lower case. The Melbourne moon being ‘just 200 seconds old’ is a reference to settler Australia being not much more than 200 years old, from 1788 to the moment of the poem. And the italics (which the actor conveys in his vocal emphasis) in ‘but moon over melbourne / that knows nothing of that’ suggest disgust at the Melbourne moon’s ignorance of other moons, other cultures, other times. This becomes more evident as the poem unfolds. I highlight these aspects as they establish a binary between China and Melbourne/Australia, which the episode builds on. (1)

As Varatharajan notes, the reference to ‘sleep’ – used twice in the poem – embodies your critique of Australian multiculturalism. In 2020, policymakers would have us believe that multiculturalism is alive and well in Australia. And, yet in the context of COVID-19, we have seen an escalation in anti-Asian Australian racism. Aboriginal deaths in custody also continue to be a major injustice suffered by First Peoples.

Where do you think we are today with our definition of multiculturalism? I know your works are now often taught in a tertiary education setting. In fact, you’re regarded as one of the most academically studied Asian-Australian fiction writers of your generation. Does there need to be more engagement with works that challenge a critical multiculturalism amongst younger minds at the secondary level? For instance, it was heartening to see this Teaching Guide by Macquarie Pen. Do you think this is converting to broad participation in the secondary school sector? If not, what are the barriers?

NOTE:—To continue reading Varatharajan’s wonderful scholarly critique, press the button below.

ET—4) Seven years later, in 2002, you published your acclaimed novel The Eastern Slope Chronicle (hereafter ‘ESC’). The story centres around the main character Dao Zhuang, a young university-educated man from China. Set against the backdrop of the Tiananmen Square events of 1989, the novel explores Dao’s migration from rapidly transforming society in China to Australia in search of a new life.

Dao arrives in Australia, and life turns out to be nothing like he imagined, even after securing his Australian citizenship. Instead, he feels rejected from entering the mainstream, which as Huang and Ommundsen remark, excludes him on the basis of skin colour, immigrant status and failure to align with the ‘traditional Australian’ notions of the ‘real’ man – i.e. white and athletic. (1)

Although Dao is at the centre of the novel, his narration of immigrant life in Australia is enlarged upon by two other characters. Wang Fu Fei or Warne - Dao’s friend, also a writer who gained permanent residency after the Tiananmen Square events - and Wu Liao, a character in a novel written by Dao. This dual narrative is used to great effect in ESC.

In the writing of his novel, Dao reflects on the lives of his inner circle in Australia and his friends in his hometown back in China. In this way, the novel – inside the novel as it were - becomes a way of expressing various perspectives around the Australian way of life while simultaneously navigating the many different types of identities available to the diasporic migrant.

The dual narrative is also used to examine the identity crisis of the protagonist. Having migrated to Australia, Dao is confronted with a cultural conflict of another persuasion when he returns ‘home’ to China where he is rejected once more for electing to adopt Australian citizenship.

In Australia, ESC was critically praised for conveying a complex, nuanced representation of diasporic Chinese cultural identity in Australia. (1) (2) (3) However, as the scholar Huang Dan noted, in China and overseas, the novel attracted some controversy citing one professor from Suzhou University in mainland China who said:

Ouyang Yu betrays a dangerous resentment against his homeland. Catering to the mainstream population of the author’s adopted culture, the book speaks of China and its people in all the abusive extremities of Orientalism deliberately. (3)

Ouyang, Huang attributed the book’s negative reception in China to its failure to express a sense of nostalgia for your homeland. I’m not sure if I agree. For me, in reading your work, the nostalgia for ‘motherland’ is always felt, but never in a superficial, mundane way as this paragraph suggests:

he could not possibly have the best of both worlds, that is, to have the kind of human activity available in China that makes you feel like a human being and to have the kind of freedom in Australia that helps you to do whatever you wish to do. On the contrary, he was now stuck helplessly with the worst of both worlds, the kind of quiet that Australia condemned the poor to and the lack of China. (ESC p. 100)

Perhaps this comes from your world outlook, which is less nationalistic and more cosmopolitan – which is not to say that the work is not deeply indebted to a sense of cultural heritage rooted in China. Would you reflect a little on the reception of the book and this sentiment?

NOTE:—To read Huang’s article entitled ‘Chinese Culture Cures: Ouyang Yu’s Representation and Resolution of the Immigrant Syndrome in The Eastern Slope Chronicle’, press the button below. 

ET—5) For me, one of the particular strengths of the novel is the way it examines Dao’s movements in both directions – West and East. I wondered if you ever considered producing a bilingual version of the work – perhaps an audio version, moving from English to Chinese and back again – as a way of further exploring the role of language in restricting or enhancing the experience of living/moving between cultures?

Would you comment a little on this and perhaps your perspectives on bilingual publications in general? How you would like your readers to engage with the ideas and the reading experience?

ET—6) I want to turn now to your first ‘self-destructed books’, which is part of a suite of your so-called ‘unpublishable’ poetry objects that you have been making for some years now. These objects have taken a variety of forms. From your ‘poetry coffins’ – re-purposed tissue boxes and toilet rolls full of inscribed cigarette buts – to your hand-made ‘Living Books’ – re-purposed copies of your published books assembled with scribblings of poetic text, faded receipts, airline tickets, used tissues, food scraps and other detritus. Like another one of your fascinating projects that I love – your ‘tree-writing’ project – the books came about in response to your ideas of ecology and time, noted in a great 2018 interview with Amelia Dale where you said:

the perishability of the flesh, and traces of living. And, of course, the unpublishability. Who would ever publish them? If so, how? And also the connection of poetry to art, to perishable objects, such as the fruit peels that turn to dust, along with the Chinese characters or English words written on them. The sadness of life. The sending up of all those aimed at success. It’s an ultimate expression of failure. The meaningfulness of life that is rubbish that is life.

—Ouyang Yu (1)

Would you reflect on this line of thinking - how it has informed the selection and creation of your first three self-destructed works in Chinese as part of Three Firsts? Namely, The Angry Wu Zili 1999, The Limit 2004 and The Kingsbury Tales 2010. Perhaps your interlinking of the idea of ‘self-destruction’ with creative practice also, i.e. specifically, the intersection with failure as a driver of experimentation and self-translation/transformation?

I believe the first two books were originally written in Chinese – but possibly also included some English text which caused some disconcertion for the publisher - while The Kingsbury Tales was originally written in English and you later translated into Chinese? Or perhaps it was translated from Chinese to English?

Note:—Press the button below to borrow The Kingsbury Tales 2010. Chinese speakers can also borrow the The Angry Wu Zili here.

ET—7) We have talked about the linkage of your destroyed works to the idea of auto-destructive art in the Western art tradition, specifically, the practice and thinking of the artist and political activist Gustav Metzger (1926-2017). Metzger first coined the concept shortly after the end of WWII. The movement was anti-capitalist and anti-consumerist. (1)

One of the central tenets of Metzger’s conception of the art form was that the work should be both auto-creative and auto-destructive, which he clarified in reference to his early acid paintings in the late 1950s. (1)

These works were created by spraying acid on sheets of nylon, which produced rapidly changing shapes in the dissolving nylon – making the work both auto-creative and auto-destructive. Paraphrasing Metzger the journalist and author Stuart Jeffries explained:

The important thing about burning a hole in that sheet, was that I opened up a new view across the Thames of St Paul’s Catherdral. Auto-destructive art was never merely destructive. Destroy a canvas and you create shapes. (1)

Perhaps, for some, this is a rather obvious point. But I think it's quite fundamental in terms of understanding your practice and this project. That is, your process of self-destruction is not one way; it leads in many directions – to new modes of working and new creations - and is never quite complete.

This idea of incompleteness also embodies one of the key principles of Metzger's 'manifesto'. Written in 1962, 'Machine Auto-creative and auto-destructive art' emphasised the idea of ‘self-completion’, the importance of the process continuing through the reader /viewer response once the artist sets it off, avoiding any sense of ownership over the development of the piece. (1)

A second principle, which I think is also very connective with your concerns around ecology and time (especially your use of ephemeral materials such as detritus etc), was the notion that the work must, within the course of 20 years, return to its original state of nothingness.  (1)

The third widely cited principle of the movement was the centring of public participation. Although the artist might set off the process, it must happen in a public space. It was not to be consumed privately for a select group.  (1)

One might say that such is the life of books in a library setting where they find their way into many places and spaces, subject to wear and tear over the years; a sentiment which has informed our decision to install display copies of the books as part of the exhibit.

Would you comment on these principles and connectivity with your self-destructions and our exhibit of Three Firsts for the exhibition?

ET—8) As we have walked through your firsts together, one begins to gather a sense of the autobiographical nature of Three Firsts. It aims to explore the life of books – through the migration of your creative direction over time. At the same time, the story is universal, encouraging the viewer to think about the life and role of books and literature in broader society – the way they are consumed and valued (or sometimes not).

This inference leads us rather nicely into your final set of “Firsts” – that is, first self-published rejections in limited edition copies of one. These works are inherently political. Like the self-destructed works, they carry anti-capitalist and anti-consumerist messages.

They are also inherently anti-establishment in their decision to self-publish in a limited edition of one, denying publishers the privilege of playing the role of taste and profit maker. The exhibition public is instead encouraged to ‘discover’ the manuscripts and share their sentiments/criticisms.

In this way, the ‘single-copy Firsts’ meet Metzger’s notions of encouraging public participation - and critique the writer’s agent/publishers - perhaps consciously biting the hand that feeds the writer in a bid to find a home/acceptance for these repeated rejections that by-passes the power structures of the literary world.

Would you reflect a little on this line of thinking and how it has informed the selection and creation of your first self-published rejections in limited editions of one? Namely, West of the River, Spring Waters: Li Yu, the Emperor of Poetry (“Spring Waters”) and Small Says: Words, Stories and Mini-Meditations

ET—9) We have decided to present a special evening of live readings from the limited editions in connection with the show. They won't be recorded. It's a way of complementing this idea of a single edition whilst also encouraging folks to be present. Without giving too much away, I want to touch briefly on the single-copy editions starting with West of the River. In your synopsis, you describe the book thus:

This novel has been 7 years in the making, gone into multiple drafts. It tells the story of a young Chinese man spending part of his life in an Australian prison. Sentenced to 15 years imprisonment, Zi Xu writes letters on a daily basis to Aixia, his girlfriend who he accidentally kills in the act of lovemaking. While an unreligious man, Zi Xu believes that the persistent act of writing letters to Aixia may somehow bring her back to life. In these letters he composes, he tells her of his own life story in all its aspects, straddling between China and Australia, in an unsettling language that is full of vigour and invention.

The letter format of the book is compelling; it conveys this sense of time passing and drives the reader forward. Each letter shares different aspects of Zi Xu’s person – his early life experiences, relationships and life in Australia.

In the early stages of the book, there is a sense of grappling with the protagonist’s identity and that of his love – slipping between John or Zi Xu and Yvonne and Aixia. What does this slippage between English in Chinese identities mean?

In the blurb, you describe the book as a crime novel, and technically it is, but it immediately feels like more than that.

At times, the language of the book is very unsettling, especially where it describes the violent act of sex or sexual acts of violence against women – be it a dream, imagination or a retelling of an actual event.

Truthfully, there is so much to talk about, and this might be something we delve into at the live reading. However, perhaps to ringfence our conversation a bit, for now, I couldn’t help but notice that at the start of the novel, there is a line of poetry by Paul Éluard that reads: ‘Love, is man unfinished’.

To me, these words perfectly encapsulated my feelings about Zi Xu. It immediately called to mind the idea of ‘Love feeling’, which you describe in your book Small Says: Words, Stories and Mini-Meditations (which we will return to below). Specifically, the sense of Zi Xu’s destruction and transformation through his search for intimacy, for ‘aiqing’ (love feeling), which he discovers not in the violence of sex but through the intimate process of letter writing to his loved one which cultivates the feeling in him. The passage reads: 

Love is not such a simple thing. In Chinese, it can be one word, ai (love). In its contemporary usage, it is often two words, aiqing (love feeling). It is on this that Rabbit, my friend in Shenzhen, made some comments based on his personal experience.

He said: There are three words that are important: ai (love), qing (feeling), qian (money). In one’s youth, there is much ai, which really is lust and sex, e.g. you make love, you do not make feeling. When one reaches 50 or goes beyond 55, as I am now, one hankers after qing, something ai cannot match, something that can accompany you on your journey towards the end of your life. You can buy love with money but you can’t buy qing with it. Qing, to put it simply, is this warmth extruding from a partner lying in bed next to you that you wake up to each and every morning and with whom you share thoughts and feelings without having to experience the violence of sex. (I think I’m putting my own thoughts here.)

The letter format of the novel is such that you can put the book down and come back to it as desired. However, I think in a sense, you grasp the complexity of Zi Xu's character and transformation if you can read in one sitting as I did? Perhaps like how one would experience a play? I felt the same way about the character of Li Yu when reading Spring Waters: Li Yu, the Emperor of Poetry (discussed further below). 

Would you tell us a little more about the starting point for the book? In one of the early letters from John to Aixia, he talks about being a middle school student studying “erke” – “a classical novel, in which women often wake up from their death when men make love to them”. (p.9) Was this classical tradition a point of inspiration?

Chinese history consists of a sequence of dynasties, from Tang, through Song, Yuan and Ming, to Qing, with the rise of the Republic of China in 1911 that ended it all and, further, with the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, that capped it all. Huge spaces between dynasties, though, exist that have escaped from memory. Take five dynasties and ten kingdoms, for example, that were active between when the Tang dynasty ended in 907 and when the Song dynasty began in 960, or, more specifically, in 979 when the Southern Tang came to an end. 

This period, though lasting only 72 years, is one of the most turbulent, most chaotic and most bloody periods in Chinese history. Kingdoms rise and fall; thrones are overthrown and re-restored, and wars rage and  sweep across the  five dynasties,  all in  a succession of intrigue, infighting, incest, mass killing, mass starvation, mass migration, captures, surrenders and falls, falls, and more falls, until another dynasty rose on the horizon.

Literature waxed and waned in this period, too, like before, more waning than waxing. But one poet, by the name of Li Yu, stood out as the most significant, and the best, of all the rest of them, the progenitor of ci, a new form of poetry, who paved the way for the flourishing and culmination of this art form in the Song dynasty. He is the emperor, the last one, of the Southern Tang. While his poetry thrived, his kingdom diminished. But his poetry reaches its apogee after he was captured alive, taken prisoner, when his kingdom fell at the hands of the invading Song army. His is curious combination of success and failure, success in making the highest achievements in poetry while failing to run his own kingdom properly till it fell.

The following story centres around this life as a poet and emperor, a poet-emperor, who achieved the notoriety of a bitterly failed emperor and the fame of a highly accomplished poet. 

— Ouyang Yu, Spring Waters: Li Yu, the Emperor of Poetry, pp. 6-7

ET—10) I’d like to turn to Spring Waters: Li Yu, the Emperor of Poetry (hereafter ‘Spring Waters’) now, which examines the life story of Li Yu (Chinese 李煜; c. 937 – 15 August 978), the emperor poet after whom you were named. For those who may not know, Li Yu (c. 937 – 15 August 978) was the third and final ruler of the Southern Tang dynasty during imperial China's Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. He reigned from 961 until 976, when he was captured by the invading Song dynasty armies, which annexed his kingdom. He died by poison on the orders of Emperor Taizong of Song after two years as an exiled prisoner. Although an incompetent ruler, Li Yu was regarded as a master of the ci song form of lyrical poetry.

In the blurb of the book, you described the novel thus:

This is a poet's novel, written in a tradition of novels by such poets as Inger Christenssen, Pia Juul, Sylvia Plath, Agota Kristof, Rainer Maria Rilke, Gertrude Stein, Ingeborg Bachmann, Mina Loy, Anne Carson and Ben Lerner.

A poet's novel takes pride in its originality by being different, innovative, inventive, and imaginative, and by daring to challenge the literary status quo and take the literary law into its own hands.

Spring Waters is such a work of fiction that departs from the normal pattern of sentimental lyricism in telling the biographical story of Li Yu in a tone and mood of autobiography, a contemporary poet remembering his reincarnated original self about 1,000 years ago.

Most important of all, the author, on his birth, was named after Li Yu by his own father.

Can you elaborate on what you were hoping to explore, perhaps situating this in the context of the quote below? I think it centres around this idea of failure and how this intersects with the creative process.

ET—11) The final single edition book to be presented is Small Says: Words, Stories and Mini-Meditations (‘Small Says’ hereafter). It takes its inspiration from the ancient Chinese literary genre of biji xiaoshuo (pen-notes fiction). In the book’s synopsis, you described it thus:

A work of creative nonfiction, this book breaks the new ground in that, following my first book of creative nonfiction, On the Smell of an Oily Rag: Speaking English, Thinking Chinese and Living Australian (2007, Wakefield Press), it further develops the ancient Chinese literary genre of biji xiaoshuo (pen-notes fiction) into what I innovatively call biji feixiaoshuo (pennotes nonfiction) by expanding it to include other genres of nonfiction and fiction, such as diary entries, song-based lyrics, poems, personal letters or email letters, works of fiction in progress, dialogue pieces, memoirs, and what not.

In the un-titled introduction to the book, you elaborated on your motivations:

Reticences, silences, interrupted thoughts, non sense, gaps in the gaps, ignorances, betweenesses, direct translations that defy either orientalisation or occidentalisation: these are the things I have always wanted to write about. And I have wanted to write a book that few have written in English, a book that defies categorisation, that invites criticism of the most dismissive kind, that has no chapters with headings that Bruce, my editor, put in, that comes as fleetingly as a thought or turbulently as an emotion, that mixes genres in a most intriguing manner.

…

In the smallest way possible

Aussies will have all sorts of things to say about these fragments and the fragmentary way in which I produce these fragments, being a people addicted to a grand narrative, a master narrative, with a tendency to exclude anything suspect that runs counter to their way(s) of thinking and writing. I want to tell them in plain words that all I want to do is to offer the simplest ideas in the smallest way possible, a thin sharp ray of light that illuminates a single idea or thought or feeling, one at a time.

I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment – in Australia, there is a tendency to follow a grandmaster narrative. Often, at the heart of this is also a sense of defensiveness which I think comes from our colonial history of picturing an idea of ‘them’ and ‘us’. I think there is perhaps a tendency also in twenty-first-century life to think we need to ‘know’ everything rather than have a good intellect to question.

Can you elaborate on this inclination? Do you see this as something that resides particularly within the literary establishment, or do you think it’s also something that is felt within broader society and if so, why?

ET 12)—With Small says, there is so much to unpick. I wanted to select two small says to give our audiences a taste of what we might delve into during our special reading session. The first one, from the section entitled ‘Narrative’, is titled Loneliness:

Talking about gudu (loneliness), I recall interpreting for a man imprisoned for eighteen years in a prison at the foothill of the You Yangs, who was trying to express his feeling in Chinese but could only manage to put down the character du, which contains a worm on its right side. I wrote the character gu, down for him and told the assessing prison office about his sense of isolation in a prison where he could not even find a book in Chinese to while away his time with. My suggestion that the Aussie prison stock some Chinese titles was readily listened to and I followed this with an emailed list of recommended titles. But I have never heard back from him again.

This small say again made me think of West of the River. Zi Xu is obviously a fictional character, but I wondered if he was born from these experiences, in getting to know this man, in your capacity as a translator.

In a way, it seems to me that through Small says - perhaps like On the Smell of an Oily Rag: Speaking English, Thinking Chinese and Living Australian (hereafter On the Smell of an Oily Rag), which I love – we have unique insights into you as a poet and writer but also as a translator - working with the international literary communities - but also everyday people in the legal system, aged care homes, detention centres and so on.

Translation of a work of literature is infinitely subjective and challenging. It requires great intelligence, a lot of experience, patience and modesty, all aspects I greatly admire in how you work. However, I sense that your other translation projects, serving the community, are equally challenging and important. It is a role that I think requires the same attributes but also enormous resources of empathy.

Can you reflect on this sentiment and how your translation work with the community has informed your creative practice and world outlook?

ET—12) In closing, in Small Says, there is much here that gives us pause – to question and gather insights into Chinese and Western language and culture. To me, this space for questioning stems from what is written, but also what is unwritten – a revelation which is brought home in reading ‘Buying high-pressure cookers in Germany’ - from the section entitled ‘East West’:

Last October when I went to Frankfurt, Germany, with a group of Chinese publishers, editors and writers, what I found funny is something that both bored me and made me uncomfortable: these zhishi fenzi (knowledgeable elements or intellectuals) were more interested in buying good quality high-pressure cookers than visiting the Goethe Museum, for example. Mr Cao, who I shared a bedroom with, was the only one who showed any interest in knowledge; he went everywhere in search of books written by Rilke as he was both a lover of Rilke’s work as well as a translator in Chinese. It’s not till today, nearly a year after the visit, that I have come to terms with those “knowledgeable elements”. Coming from a 5,000 year old civilisation, they probably did not feel there was anything much in terms of culture to learn from in Germany except the latter’s technological products. As a rule, Chinese people when they go to the West, it is technological advances that attract their attention rather than civilisational achievements; the large number of enrolments in the sciences and the related areas bear ample evidence to this. On the other hand, what interest the West in China is its past glories. An interesting example is Rodney my Australian writer friend who would gaze at an ancient wall in Nanjingfor a long time without moving, forgetting that China was inching towards the end of the twentieth century. In a word, China looks for the new in the West while the West looks for the old in China.

Several of the projects we are presenting for Silent Dialogue reflect upon artistic interchanges between Australia and China across time – by including the work of Chinese Australian artists and writers of different generations in the present. As we navigate the relationship between the two countries, what role do you think art and literature should and could play?

And, if there is such a role to be played, do you think that engagement should come from a dialogue that seeks to honour and respect differences or holds up felt connections across cultures?

In On the Smell of an Oily Rag, there was a sense of the book illustrating that our cultures were closer together than we perhaps thought. Do you think this is the case today? Is there hope for tomorrow?

NOTE:—Press the button below to borrow On the Smell of an Oily Rag: Speaking English, Thinking Chinese and Living Australian (2007). 

ET 1)—How do you start each day? Are there any daily rituals you like to follow?

OY 1)—I begin with poetry as I take my morning walks in the park. I speak into my mobile phone, in English or Chinese, depending on my mood. I normally do 3 to 5 poems per morning. Now that I’ve finished my novel, I enter into a hiatus, waiting for the next big thing to happen. As I make a living as a translator, I do that on a daily basis, too.

ET 2)—What is the catalyst for a new poem? How do you make a start?

OY 2)—Poetry comes at all times, nothing is fixed. Nothing works like a machine. All instincts.

ET 3)—How long does the whole process take and when do you know the poem is ready?

OY 3)—It takes a few minutes, sometimes seconds. Nothing is cut and dry. Nothing is rigid. Everything flows or flies.