- 114: NO THEME 13with J Toledo & C Tse 113: INVISIBLE WALLSwith A Walker & D Disney 112: TREATwith T Dearborn 111: BABYwith S Deo & L Ferney 110: POP!with Z Frost & B Jessen 109: NO THEME 12with C Maling & N Rhook 108: DEDICATIONwith L Patterson & L Garcia-Dolnik 107: LIMINALwith B Li 106: OPENwith C Lowe & J Langdon 105: NO THEME 11with E Grills & E Stewart 104: KINwith E Shiosaki 103: AMBLEwith E Gomez and S Gory 102: GAMEwith R Green and J Maxwell 101: NO THEME 10with J Kinsella and J Leanne 100: BROWNFACE with W S Dunn 99: SINGAPOREwith J Ip and A Pang 97 & 98: PROPAGANDAwith M Breeze and S Groth 96: NO THEME IXwith M Gill and J Thayil 95: EARTHwith M Takolander 94: BAYTwith Z Hashem Beck 93: PEACHwith L Van, G Mouratidis, L Toong 92: NO THEME VIIIwith C Gaskin 91: MONSTERwith N Curnow 90: AFRICAN DIASPORAwith S Umar 89: DOMESTICwith N Harkin 88: TRANSQUEERwith S Barnes and Q Eades 87: DIFFICULTwith O Schwartz & H Isemonger 86: NO THEME VIIwith L Gorton 85: PHILIPPINESwith Mookie L and S Lua 84: SUBURBIAwith L Brown and N O'Reilly 83: MATHEMATICSwith F Hile 82: LANDwith J Stuart and J Gibian 81: NEW CARIBBEANwith V Lucien 80: NO THEME VIwith J Beveridge 57.1: EKPHRASTICwith C Atherton and P Hetherington 57: CONFESSIONwith K Glastonbury 56: EXPLODE with D Disney 55.1: DALIT / INDIGENOUSwith M Chakraborty and K MacCarter 55: FUTURE MACHINES with Bella Li 54: NO THEME V with F Wright and O Sakr 53.0: THE END with P Brown 52.0: TOIL with C Jenkins 51.1: UMAMI with L Davies and Lifted Brow 51.0: TRANSTASMAN with B Cassidy 50.0: NO THEME IV with J Tranter 49.1: A BRITISH / IRISH with M Hall and S Seita 49.0: OBSOLETE with T Ryan 48.1: CANADA with K MacCarter and S Rhodes 48.0: CONSTRAINT with C Wakeling 47.0: COLLABORATION with L Armand and H Lambert 46.1: MELBOURNE with M Farrell 46.0: NO THEME III with F Plunkett 45.0: SILENCE with J Owen 44.0: GONDWANALAND with D Motion 43.1: PUMPKIN with K MacCarter 43.0: MASQUE with A Vickery 42.0: NO THEME II with G Ryan 41.1: RATBAGGERY with D Hose 41.0: TRANSPACIFIC with J Rowe and M Nardone 40.1: INDONESIA with K MacCarter 40.0: INTERLOCUTOR with L Hart 39.1: GIBBERBIRD with S Gory 39.0: JACKPOT! with S Wagan Watson 38.0: SYDNEY with A Lorange 37.1: NEBRASKA with S Whalen 37.0: NO THEME! with A Wearne 36.0: ELECTRONICA with J Jones
Ouyang Yu
The Ugly Poem: Ouyang Yu’s Terminally Poetic and the Counter-Aesthetics of the Multilingual
Beauty has a quality about it that pretends to neutrality and universality, despite being steeped in asymmetrical constructions of aesthetic judgement. Of course, this is no surprise in a hierarchical world; ‘Taste classifies, and it classifies the classifier.’
Posted in ESSAYS
Tagged Ghassan Hage, Kam Louie, Kameron Lai, Mikhail Bakhtin, Ouyang Yu, Yasmin Yildiz
chinaman fish
It’s a pain Not in the arse Not in the neck Not even in the fingers Searching for the word, e.g. in an online Chinese dictionary Called youdao, Having the Way In which the words, Chinaman Fish, is defined as …
Posted in 108: DEDICATION
Tagged Ouyang Yu
Wind
When you are at your loneliest you are this wind at work being itself nonstop
Posted in 107: LIMINAL
Tagged Ouyang Yu
House Style Lifestyle, Or: Same. Same. Same. Same. Same. Same.
Image by Lauren Connelly. 3920 words. 22-minute read. Welcome to the world of snackable content. Listen closely: like an ambient soundscape, its soft tides wash over you and you devour it quickly. Sometimes, it repeats an opinion you’ve already developed, …
Posted in ESSAYS
Tagged Brandon Taylor, Cher Tan, Fredric Jameson, Kyle Chayka, Ludwig Yeetgenstein, Maria Tumarkin, Ouyang Yu, Rem Koolhaas
4 Duo Er Translations
A layer of feathers, thin, not yet dropped
Posted in TRANSLATIONS
Tagged Duo Er, Ouyang Yu
2 life
No, please don’t Y do u want people 2 admire u And keep admiring u It’s boring that way The business of this business Is basically death In love, no I mean in life U make words come 2 life …
Posted in 100: BROWNFACE
Tagged Ouyang Yu
Shi Jianmin
I must confess that I have not included him in that fiction although I am not sure if that is the reason why he bumps into me now in this crowd. Even though we have not met for nearly 30 …
4 Translated Geng Xiang Poems
Image courtesy of Nichalos Walton-Healy. Translations from Master’s Return Journey: The Fields in Auvers — An Interpretation of 120 Paintings by Van Gogh Prologue For one who pulls someone’s Chestnuts out of the fire, he does not easily voice His …
Posted in TRANSLATIONS
Tagged Geng Xiang, Ouyang Yu
‘Refusing to be published, refusing even to perish’: Amelia Dale Interviews Ouyang Yu
Ouyang Yu, now based between Melbourne and Shanghai, came to Australia in mid-April 1991 and, by early 2018, has published 96 books of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, literary translation and literary criticism in English and Chinese. He also edits Australia’s only Chinese literary journal, Otherland.
Posted in INTERVIEWS
Tagged Amelia Dale, Ouyang Yu
Enough
in Austr alia people r af,raid of not making enough money in Austr alia people r af,raid of not being correct enough in Austr alia people r af,raid of not being good enough in Austr alia people r af,raid of …
Posted in 84: SUBURBIA
Tagged Ouyang Yu
Review Short: Ouyang Yu’s Diary of a Naked Official
Well known as a poet, translator, and literary critic, Diary of a Naked Official marks Ouyang Yu’s second foray into the novel form. His first, Loose: A Wild History (Wakefield Press, 2007), mixes fiction and non-fiction, poetry, literary criticism and diaristic writing.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Noel King, Ouyang Yu
6-word stories (50 of them)
1. BBQ: Zero separation, bed being the body. 2. Title, to Come: Music, alive, a fruit of fingers. 3. Each and Every Morning, Electronic Cleansing: Click. Click. Click. No emails coming. 4. Eight for Six, Reduction: No agitation. Peace and …
Posted in 77: EXPLODE
Tagged Ouyang Yu
Bonny Cassidy Reviews Contemporary Australian Literature: A World Not Yet Dead
As Feature Reviews Editor and sometime reviewer for Cordite Poetry Review it is an unusual (and therefore fun) privilege to consider a title in which poetry is critically addressed in the company of other forms. Too often it is it either quarantined within poetry-only criticism, or mentioned as an embarrassing aside to discussions of prose.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Bonny Cassidy, John Kinsella, John Mateer, Nicholas Birns, Ouyang Yu, Pam Brown
The Arch i bald Prize: an award-giving history
2015: a white won 2014: a white won 2013: a white won 2012: a white won 2011: a white won 2010: a white won 2009: a white won 2008: a white won 2007: a white won 2006: a white won …
Posted in 72: THE END
Tagged Ouyang Yu
Michael Aiken Reviews Ouyang Yu
Ouyang Yu is a prolific writer whose combination of occupations – poet, novelist, translator, academic – gives some context to this book’s obsessive engagement with word, language and meaning. His biographical note mentions that he came to Australia at the age of 35, and there’s a pervasive trope in Fainting with Freedom of a stranger-in-a-strange-land’s curiosity for the materiality of language and its malleability: something akin to what Kerouac once alluded to when he described his relationship to English – a language he didn’t learn until he was eight – as a tool he could very consciously manipulate as necessary for effect and meaning.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Michael Aiken, Ouyang Yu
L
every day is a loss of it self winter is now baring it all in its unloving look even when it pre tends to be fe male convenience is not square but plural to translate is to be always chronologically …
Posted in 69: TRANSTASMAN
Tagged Ouyang Yu
Sam Moginie Reviews Breaking New Sky: Contemporary Poetry from China
Breaking New Sky is a happily variegated collection of work by contemporary Chinese poets, edited and translated by Chinese-Australian poet, novelist and translator Ouyang Yu. Strangeness produced by means of a ‘neutral’ or ‘plain’ English (a ‘Yu signature tone’) gives the poems and their objects a riddle-like quality whose pleasures and dramas implicate food, sex, work, river systems, animals, domestic space, relationships, the medical system, nostalgia, death, farming and sleep. This plainness is put to work as the material of an aphoristic narrative mode that defines this anthology; making small claims continuously and thereby amassing charm.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Bai Helin, Cheng Chou-yu, Hou Ma, Hu Xian, Liang Yujing, Liu Meisong, Lu Ye, Ouyang Yu, Sam Moginie, Shu Ting, Yue Xuan, Zhou Suotong
Jennifer Mackenzie Reviews Asia Pacific Writing Series Books 1-4
Vagabond Press has recently issued four attractively presented volumes of poetry from the Asia Pacific region. Each contains the work of three poets and represents China, Japan, Vi-etnam and the Philippines, respectively.
5 Poems by Ардак НУРГАЗЫ in English, Chinese and Kazakh
Ardakh Nurgaz (Ардак НУРГАЗЫ） is a Kazakh poet, essayist, critic born in 1972. He graduated from university in 1995, and began publishing work in 1991. From 2006 to 2008, he was editor-in-chief of Foreign Literatures, a bi-monthly in Kazakhstan. He is now correspondent of The Alma-Ata Evening newspaper. He has published the poetry collections A Book of Pseudo Freedoms (2009) and A Collection of Humming Birds (in Chinese and Kazakh, 2012).
Posted in TRANSLATIONS
Tagged Ardakh Nurgaz, Ouyang Yu
The Earth of Kashgar (translated excerpts of a long poem)
Other than the fact that Adili Adili Tuniyazi is a Uyghur poet, I know nothing more about him. But when I first read his work in Dangdai xianfeng shi 30 nian (Avant-Garde Poetry for 30 Years), I was impressed. The word zuguo (motherland) that he refers to frequently in his poem is so ambiguous that I suspect it’s not China proper.
Posted in TRANSLATIONS
Tagged Adili Adili Tuniyazi, Ouyang Yu
Jal Nicholl Reviews Ouyang Yu
In his often quoted poem ‘An identity CV’, Ouyang Yu describes himself as Australian for the last couple of years, Chinese for the first 43; unashamed of either’. National educational priorities notwithstanding, I have not found the time to learn Chinese. Inevitably though, the ideal reader of this bilingual volume would know a little more of that language than nihao. However, I immediately offer an observation that if this book is not strictly intended for English monoglots, it will have to make do with a considerably smaller readership than the average volume of contemporary poetry.
Posted in BOOK REVIEWS
Tagged Jal Nicholl, Ouyang Yu
Asian Australian Diasporic Poets: A Commentary
This essay provides a survey of the poetry of some Asian Australian poets, and does not attempt to be definitive. Diasporic poetics raise more questions than they answer and are just as much about dis-placement as about place, just as much about a ‘poetics of uncertainty’ as about certainties of style/nation/identity.
‘Don’t be stupid’ (‘바보같이 굴지 마’)
I looked at his darkening profile, So, you are Korean? No, Chinese, he said If he were the black guy last night I’d keep talking about Kenya and Obama How his dad used to be working in the bank whose …
Posted in 44: OZ-KO (HOJU-HANGUK)
Tagged Kim Gaihyun, Ouyang Yu
Strokes country (획을 긋는 나라)
If you put people next to a stroke Like this丨 On its right Like this：人 You become wings Like this：人丨 If you want to be air Borne you put the person along Side an English Letter: H Like this：人H You …
Posted in 44: OZ-KO (HOJU-HANGUK)
Tagged Kim Sunghyun, Ouyang Yu
