Ouyang Yu



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

Wind

When you are at your loneliest you are this wind at work being itself nonstop

Posted in 107: LIMINAL | Tagged

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, …

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4 Duo Er Translations

A layer of feathers, thin, not yet dropped

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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

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 …

Posted in 93: PEACH | Tagged

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 …

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‘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.

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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

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.

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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

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.

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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

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.

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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

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.

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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.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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‘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 ,

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 ,

The latest report

Country | Number of Deaths | Cause

Posted in 35: CUSTOM | Tagged