Xiang Yixian 向以鲜

Xiang Yixian is a poet, essayist, and professor at Sichuan University. He has published numerous poetry collections and other writings, and has won awards for both his poetry and academic work. In the 1980s, together with colleagues, he co-founded grassroots literary journals including Red Flag, Dynasty, Tianlai, and Xiangwang.

On his practice of writing poetry, Xiang Yixian writes:

What I am exploring in my poetry writing at present is what I have always explored, i.e. the interrelationship between our classical literary/cultural heritage and contemporary poetry: discovering embryonic modernity in the classics, and revealing modernity’s long-standing classical roots.

The form of poetry I prefer is that of no fixed form. Freedom is the external manifestation of its growth, rhythm is its inner life-force. The style of language I prefer is vivid, accurate, immersive, imaginative.

Poetry is written for one’s own conscience and for one’s own god, but is also for the world. It is sublime, beyond dreams, beyond the sun. It is, as Rilke put it, the ‘kernel of all kernels, heart of all hearts’.