Gong Xuemin 龚学敏

Gong Xuemin is a native of Jiuzhaigou, one of China’s most famous areas of natural scenery beauty, and currently lives in Chengdu. His poetry collections include Jiuzhai Blue, Forbidden City, Paper Sunflowers, Brink, New Chengdu Poems, Economy Class, and Snow and Elegy, as well as a book of annotated modern Chinese translations of Tang Dynasty poet Li Shangyin, and an essay collection, Seeing by Eating.

Gong Xuemin on poetry:

The great changes of our era are having a profound influence on how we write poetry. A true poet should take the lead in perceiving new things, new ideas, and new deviations from past practice; they should try to capture a brand-new poetic sensibility. This is the core test of a poet's writing ability. The rapid developments of our age place greater demands on a poet’s sensitivity and judgment. A poet’s mission is not only to create poetry, but also to provide people with a unique, poetic perspective from which to understand the world and humanity itself. Because faced with the power of artificial intelligence, we may well be the last generation of truly ‘human’ creators of either poetry or literature.