More unofficial poetry online and a (livestreamed) symposium

About 25,000 pages of new material have been added to the digital collection of unofficial poetry from China at Leiden University Libraries, the online archive of a groundbreaking cultural tradition of our time. (Scroll down for a full list of titles in the digital collection.)

To celebrate the DIY tradition in Chinese poetry, Leiden University Libraries is hosting a symposium on Friday 22 November 2024 from 3.15 to 5 pm CET, followed by drinks. All are welcome, in person or online.

Registration is required for in-person attendance. If you register for the livestream, you’ll get a reminder closer to the date. Alternatively, go straight to the livestream on the day.

The digital collection of unofficial poetry

Key agents of emancipation and renewal after the Mao era, unofficial poetry journals are hugely influential but hard to find. With guidance and support from poets, editors, and collectors in the source community, Leiden University Libraries is making its unique collection of this material freely accessible online, for viewing and downloading.

The collection was built by Maghiel van Crevel during regular fieldwork trips since the 1990s and continues to grow. In addition to journals, it contains many unofficially published books, including both individual collections and multiple-author anthologies.

The symposium

Speakers (15 minutes each, followed by Q&A):

Marc Gilbert (Leiden University Libraries):
Unofficial Poetry Publications from China: Where Every Word Counts.
Zhou Zan (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences):
Who Made and Makes the Space for Unofficial Poetry?
Nanne Timmer (Leiden University):
Unexpected Cuban-Chinese Connections: Poetic Contagions and Samizdat Writing.
Bao Hongwei (University of Nottingham):
Queer Poetic Voices in Unofficial Journals.

Figure 1: Symphony of the Fire God.

Maghiel van Crevel will MC.

This year’s upgrade

Some gems from this year’s upgrade of the digital collection:

Huang Xiang’s Symphony of the Fire God (火神交响诗), written in the underground during the Cultural Revolution and published in 1979 by the Guiyang-based Enlightenment (启蒙) group. (Fig.1)
The Third Generation (第三代人, 1983), a legendary journal out of Sichuan edited by Bei Wang and Zhao Ye whose name lives on in the vast literary-historical category of ‘Third Generation poetry’ (第三代诗歌).
Chun Sue’s / Chun Shu’s groundbreaking series Post-80 Poetry (八十后诗选) made in Beijing in the early 2000s, full of irreverent and provocative work that drove establishment critics up the wall. (Fig. 2)
A series of exquisitely made books in the Black Whistle Poetry Project (黑哨诗歌出版计划) run by editor Fang Xianhai and designer Lu Tao out of Hangzhou since the late 2000s. The Black Whistle project exemplifies the threefold drive behind unofficial publishing: documentation, the circumvention of censorship, and bibliophilia. (Fig. 3)

Figure 2: Post-80 Poetry.

In more general terms, the upgrade includes many new additions in the areas of literary experiment (avant-garde 先锋 poetry), migrant worker poetry aka battler poetry (打工诗歌), queer poetry aka comrade poetry (同志诗歌), and other work published outside the System.

A community archive by proxy

The digital collection’s scope makes it a community archive by proxy. It documents the creativity and energy of the many poets and editors who have worked in the DIY tradition ever since the Cultural Revolution, and have helped us build the print collection. Community involvement has further increased since the project went online in 2019 and is embodied in frequent donations of new material that are initiated by members of the source community. Symphony of the Fire God and The Third Generation, mentioned above, are cases in point. The former is a gift from collector Shizhongren, the latter is a gift from poet Zhong Ming.

As is true for many archives, the collection’s development over time is shaped by contingent factors such as personal networks, the positionality of the various actors involved, and chance. At the same time, the collection is clearly representative of the tradition it helps preserve and disseminate. This holds for happy features of the material such as its poetic documentation of an era—and for less happy features such as its profound gender imbalance. In light of the latter, we are especially grateful for Zhou Zan’s upcoming visit to Leiden. Zhou is the editor of the long-standing women’s poetry journal Wings (翼), whose affiliated women’s poetry book series will hopefully enter the digital collection in the near future.

Figure 3: Yuan Wei, A Large Flock of Yuan Wei’s (2018), one of the Black Whistle books.

Acknowledgments

The help and guidance of Chinese poets, editors, collectors, and scholars has been invaluable throughout. The digital collection was first established with pilot funding from Leiden University Libraries in 2019. A generous gift from Dr. Freerk Heule, renewed support from Leiden University Libraries, and collaboration with colleagues at the Fudan University library have enabled it to truly take off. The project draws on the support and critical feedback of many colleagues across the breadth of Leiden University Libraries.

Prospects

We will continue to collect print material and make further additions to the digital collection in an ad hoc manner, depending on funding and the significance of the material in question. If you can help us find new material and/or potential sponsors, or if you would like to support the project yourself, please get in touch.

Read on for (1) some tips on accessing the material and (2) a full list of the material that is now available online. Enjoy!

Sincerely,

Maghiel van Crevel and Marc Gilbert

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(1) TIPS FOR ACCESSING THE DIGITAL COLLECTION

The material is best viewed on a computer. Functionality on mobile devices is limited. Loading the images can take some time.

Click here for a web lecture on unofficial poetry publishing in China, with abundant visuals.

Click here if you prefer a video tutorial on using the collection, or read on.

To see the full set of print and digital material in the Leiden University Libraries online catalog, go to Advanced search; select ‘Leiden collections’; under ‘Search filters’ choose ‘Holdings information’ and ‘contains,’ and type ‘UNPO’ in the field in question. As of this writing in November 2024, this should yield close to four hundred results.

Digitized material can also be accessed from the digital collection page. To see the full set, click ‘Show all items’ and then sort by ‘title’. Click the image of the journal of your choice and check the ‘Year’ dropdown menu to find the available issues per year (see this example). To go to a given journal directly from the collection page, input its full title in the search field (use simplified characters or disaggregated pinyin). Once you are inside the individual issue of your choice, there are various options for viewing (single page, two pages, thumbnail grid), for enlarging, and for downloading at the issue or page level. For an overview of all available issues of the journal in question, use the IIIF Advanced Viewer (see below).

For optimal viewing and enlarging, especially for material that is difficult to read or other questions to do with the materiality of the journal in question, click on ‘IIIF Advanced Viewer’ (tutorial here) and make sure to check out the various options for image manipulation (top left corner). The material may need a few seconds to come into full focus. The Viewer is available from inside individual issues, but also at the level of a journal’s title record. This will give you a full overview of the title in question (see this example; open the ‘Fei Fei 非非’ folder and click on the year and the issue of your choice).

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(2) TITLES CURRENTLY AVAILABLE ONLINE

The material that is currently available online is listed below loosely by founding date (journals and book series) or year of publication (individual collections and multiple-author anthologies). Holdings for individual journals range from single issues to complete sets. Some of the years are approximations.

《今天》（1978）http://hdl.handle.net/1887.1/item:3166766

《今天丛书》【芒克著《心事》（此版本用《今天》杂志封面）、北岛著《陌生的海滩》、江河著《从这里开始》、北岛著《波动》】（1978–1980）http://hdl.handle.net/1887.1/item:3570680

《启蒙丛刊》【黄翔著《火神交响诗》】（1979）http://hdl.handle.net/1887.1/item:4083676

《启明星》（1980）http://hdl.handle.net/1887.1/item:4083674

《我们》（兰州, 1980）http://hdl.handle.net/1887.1/item:4083675

《次生林》（1982）http://hdl.handle.net/1887.1/item:3166777

《我们》（上海, 1982）http://hdl.handle.net/1887.1/item:4083661

《高原诗辑》（1982）http://hdl.handle.net/1887.1/item:3166778

《第三代人》（1983）http://hdl.handle.net/1887.1/item:4083667

海子著《小站》（1983）http://hdl.handle.net/1887.1/item:3166763

《这样》（1984）http://hdl.handle.net/1887.1/item:4083671

《海上》（1985）http://hdl.handle.net/1887.1/item:3166764