I went to China in April, for a residence as poet at the Shangyuan Art Museum near Beijing, not far from Huairou. Came back to Austria in May, will go back there in August or early September. I have had several requests to tell all about it, how was it in China, how is the state of poetry, etc. The Shangyuan Art Museum is mainly about fine art, i.e. paintings, sculptures, performances, etc. Poetry is a strong feature, though. Cheng Xiaobei 程小蓓, one of the founders, is a poet herself.
I made three blog posts recently, with many references to poets I met, events at Shangyuan Art Museum, trips to Tianjin and to Shenzhen, etc. These three posts are called
儿童节
Kindertag – Neue Gedichte
and Math – Recent Poetry
All of these entries mention several artists and poets. “Kindertag” includes translations, mainly into German. You can see from the referenced links, and from the poems themselves how the state of poetry is doing, and how it is in China this year and so on, in glimpses.
Last week I had two visitors from New York who are translating my poetry from English and Chinese into Korean. They stayed two weeks, one in Vienna and one traveling to Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. I made a blog entry with poems from these two weeks. It is called
You can see where I am coming from, so to speak. And there are links included that lead to two Chinese poetry platforms. You can see from their entries what is possible on WeChat, and how self-censorship is employed.
Cheers!
Martin Winter <dujuan99@gmail.com>