Question: Reimer (hereinafter referred to as Ray).
Interviewed: Reading Paves the Way for the Future Xu Jingya (hereinafter referred to as Xu).
Lei: After you went to Shenzhen in 1985, you worked as a journalist, a real estate planner, and since 2004, a university professor. I would like to know what you did before you went to Shenzhen? What prompted you to leave Northeast China and choose Shenzhen? You said that Shenzhen is a place of survival, and you have learned a lot of survival skills there, so what impact did Shenzhen have on your poetry writing and research?
Xu: In the early 80s, there was a wonderful light in Shenzhen.
The light is a little mysterious, a little adventurous, a little trendy......It's about the same as Yan'an back then. The difference is that Shenzhen also implies a small magnanimity. At that time, the restless youth of all China were ready to move.
My experience was simple. After graduation, he worked as a poetry editor in a magazine in Jilin Province for three years. At the end of 1984, the criticism of my "Rising Poetry Group" was coming to an end, and the three of us were about to leave Jilin. Since I could not move, the two of them went first. Gong Ruihua went to Yantai. Lu Guipin went to Shenzhen. When Lu came back, the first thing he did when he saw me was to take out his press card for Shenzhen Youth Daily. The blue plastic press card shone brightly in our eyes at that time, as if it came from heaven, and I hesitated in my heart after being taken aback.
As it turned out later, Shenzhen was just a symbol. The light on it is added by the people who have gone to it with their own inner ideals. As a result, this up-and-coming city was once a paradise for dreamers and frustrated. I have been living in Shenzhen for nearly 30 years. For me, this city is not primarily about writing and researching, but about survival. It was financially squeezed and made me learn to live. Its cultural emptiness kept me away from the various circles in the interior and kept me independent. Shenzhen did not stimulate me to write a lot, but it allowed me to maintain the delicate poetry in my heart well, which is more important than writing 10 broken books.
Lei: In 1986, the second year after you went to Shenzhen Youth Daily as a reporter, you planned the "1986 'Modern Poetry Group Exhibition' of the Chinese Poetry Circle". This was of epoch-making significance at the time. At that time, when it was still very autistic, this exhibition gave birth to the vigorous development of contemporary Chinese poetry. Can you look back on some of the things that were like planning the exhibition? What do you think is the most important quality of poetry?
Xu: Poetry is self-flying, self-torture. It is gymnastics in the purest sense of the word, performed by the soul in the hollow of the body.
I am proud to say that for more than 40 years since the 70s, China's most beautiful souls have maintained a tireless pursuit of the spirit of poetry. Whether it was in the era of iron government, or in the most confusing era of the intertwining of capital and power, China's contemporary poets are silently surpassing her sufferings and creating a noble spiritual resume equivalent to how many Nobel Prizes.
The 86 Shenzhen Modern Poetry Exhibition is probably the most meaningful thing I have ever done in my life to this era. It implicitly contains all the meanings of its rebellion, its scale—it, almost miraculously, encompasses all the modern Chinese poetry of that year, that is, the Chinese poets of that year, either its authors or its readers—it is a collective prison break through the blockade of art, a perfect performance of the spirit of poetic freedom, and a declaration of independence and a model of self-help in poetry. As I've said, it's not really that big, it's just a poetry audition 20 years in advance, and it became a giant poetry page 20 years ago. Of course, it also left too many regrets and shortcomings.
To be honest, the ideal place for the development of the exhibition should be Sichuan. Compared with the turbulent basin, Shenzhen was more like a blank playground. Shenzhen, a new city created by subjective ideas, was overwhelmed by the high expectations given to it. For a few years, it didn't know what to do because there were so many things that it could do. Because there were so many things that couldn't be done back then, for a few years it didn't even know how to stop it, or whether to ban it or not—that's what I said about Shenzhen, which once had a cultural vacuum. It was on a blank playground that the exhibition completed the largest exercise of modern Chinese poetry. What was a little sinister back then has now become a good thing that everyone regrets not doing.
I have always wanted to say that it is very regrettable to me that the rapid changes in Chinese history after the 86 National Exhibition have led to an abrupt interruption in the exploration of many paths of modern Chinese poetry. As a result, Chinese poetry hastily entered the "postmodern" under the premise that "modernism" was not fully developed. After the poets struggled through the bitter corridor of survival in the 90s, modern Chinese poetry entered a mixed and shallow situation (at present, modern Chinese poetry represented by online poetry, although its tone has generally departed from my personal aesthetic boundaries). But its openness, its freedom, its casualness, its everydayness, is still respected by me, even poured). Happily, the soul of modern Chinese poetry has not changed, it has only changed into a different form, and it is still in bitter confrontation with this material world.
Lei: There used to be a debate in the Chinese poetry circle between intellectual writing and folk writing. You are a thinker and writer who has worked in a variety of professions, worked in society, and finally returned to university, how do you understand the difference between intellectual writing and folk writing?
Xu: Poetry is not a craft, let alone a culture. A true poet can understand nothing, he can know nothing. The most basic requirement of poetry for a poet is that he is a normal person. Everyone is poetic. Everyone has poetry, poetry has depths, poetry has high and low, this is my basic poetics. I once said, "Life is greater than poetry." More people will say, I am a civil standpoint. Actually, who knows. One has two eyes, and one side of your body may be closer to an apple, but can you tell which eye saw the apple first?
Intellectual poetry writing is also a respectable original, although there are too many mentally retarded and craftsmen among such writers. I have always believed in Yuan poetry and secretly admired it. I also quite admit that poetry writing is a highly operational artistic craft. But I respect artistic intuition more, and poetry is an infinite space for play. I can't help but like the beautiful poems that are clear at a glance. I said, "The most terrible poems are those that resemble poems." Without the texture of life, no matter how good the craftsmanship is, it is just craftsmanship. Even if it is dressed in poetry.
I don't know what day it was, but I suddenly realized that I seemed to be a second-rate person who was destined to write poetry. This terrible thought quickly wiped out how many days and nights of futile and master-like hard pursuit I had been searching for. From that moment on, I was no longer industrious, and I did not continue to smear in vain. A person, in the final analysis, does not live for the sake of literary history. Poetry happens to us as individuals, and as much as it is inevitable, it should enjoy as much freedom as it is. This is an important reflection of mine. I rescued myself from poetry. I know it's a tragedy, but I admit that my relationship with poetry is too shallow. I just set up an overly wide path and easily let myself go, and of course I also invisibly magnified the boundaries of the poem. Perhaps this can be called a kind of poetics of life.
Lei: You once said that the quantity of poems in the current Chinese poetry scene is increasing, while the quality is decreasing. Mass-based, casual writing dissolves the philosophical and aesthetic meaning of poetry. I think this is a disservice to Chinese poetry. So, how can a person who takes poetry writing seriously maintain his poetic nature in this environment and effectively resist this dissolution? Do you have any experiences with your wife, poet Wang Xiaoni, that are worth sharing?
Xu: In recent years, I've had some changes in my approach to poetry.
Although I still adhere to my general poetic outlook of "life experience and language awareness" for many years. But I don't dwell too much on the details of the poem.
I once said infinitely broadly: In this country and era that is so mediocre and messy, all those who can write poetry are poets!
Poetry has never been so weak, so powerless. It has long ceased to fight, no longer call, no longer gather to speak, no longer shout ......I once said something that might be called poignant: poetry has become the 'self-salvation' of modern people."
Wang Xiaoni is even more amazing, she said, poetry is her mouse hole.
Lei: Shenzhen was founded in 1979 and has been around for more than 30 years, and now it has been among the first-tier cities in terms of economy, fashion and culture. In the past 30 years, many cultural people and poets have also come to Shenzhen due to various factors. Today, there are dozens of well-known poets in Shenzhen, there are many kinds of folk poetry publications, and poetry activities are more active than in other places. Please talk about the impact of Shenzhen's economic development on Shenzhen's cultural development, and at the same time make an evaluation of Shenzhen's poetry circle.
Xu: For a long time, Shenzhen did not have culture. A city that rises from flat ground, even the population flows from other places, and even the buildings are newly grown every day, and there can be culture. But culture can also grow. As long as there are people, as long as these people live together for a long time, this or that culture must be nurtured from the crowd.
Since the late nineties, Shenzhen has unconsciously and gradually developed its own culture. In addition to some hardware and software flaunted by mainstream culture, I also value some daily life habits in Shenzhen, such as: Shenzhen's volunteer atmosphere, Shenzhen's mill tourism trend, Shenzhen's folk poetry, Shenzhen's personal collections, ......What is most cherished is the survival atmosphere and living principles that Shenzhen people have formed. The peace and tranquility of Shenzhen's urban character, the relaxation and publicness of Shenzhen people's topics, the civic consciousness and democratic tendency of Shenzhen people, and the ...... of Shenzhen people's environmental protection concepts and habitsThis kind of culture is a kind of scattered, parallel, white-collar and petty bourgeoisie, and a modern pluralistic sense of survival.
Culture is the taste of life. Culture is not a vase, an ornament in a hall. How can culture be as some ** understand, in their eyes, it seems that only the piano is culture, only pen, ink, paper and inkstone are culture, and only the Lu Prize, Mao Prize, and Nobel Prize are culture. It's ridiculous. That's just their culture, it's the culture of receiving awards.
Since the beginning of the new century, with the development of online poetry, Shenzhen has formed a modern poetry group. This group of poets is not known for its amazing works. Rather, it is characterized by a kind of silent writing, silent development, peaceful communication, relaxed posture and tireless persistence. There is no life-and-death circle struggle in Shenzhen's modern poetry group, and there is no drilling camp and utilitarianism of mainland poets. Shenzhen poets are almost 100 percent amateur poets. Their main thing is not to write poetry, but to live, to work at the same time as ordinary people, to work and work in addition to the world, they write some extra words.
I suddenly remembered what I said when I commented on Wang Xiaoni's writing in Shenzhen. What Wang Xiaoni did single-handedly in the nineties is now being done by poets all over Shenzhen:
I saw words emerge from the blank paper, like hands breaking through ...... waterShe set an incomparably sophisticated studio deep in the ...... of the soulShe created the pride of the emperor herself, and used it to silently resist the darkness and blindness of mediocr......ity and ignoranceShe lived like anyone on the street, washing and cooking peacefully. Read some words, write some words. She took those words out of the dictionary of heaven, like a soldier on the battlefield, and skillfully drew a trace of light. She lives extra by weaving those lights. ”