Shu Ting

Shu Ting (Chinese: 舒婷; pinyin: Shū Tíng; born 1952 Jinjiang, Fujian) is the pen name of Gong Peiyu (Chinese: 龚佩瑜; pinyin: Gōng Pèiyú), a Chinese poet associated with the Misty Poets.^[1][2][3]

Life

During the Cultural Revolution, she was sent to the countryside, (because her father was accused of ideological nonconformity),^[4] until 1973. Back in Fujian, she had to work at a cement factory, a textile mill, and a lightbulb factory.^[5] She began to write poetry in 1969 and her work was published in several literary magazines. Her poetry began to appear in the underground literary magazine Jīntiān (Today). In the early 1980s, she achieved prominence as the leading female representative of the Misty Poets. Her first collection, Shuangwei chuan appeared in 1982, as did a joint-collection with Gu Cheng.

She was asked to join the official Chinese Writers' Association,^[4] and won the National Outstanding Poetry Award in 1981 and 1983.^[5][6] During the "anti-spiritual pollution" movement that was launched in 1983, she, like other writers that were thought to be subversive by the state, was heavily criticised.^[7] Following this she published two collections with poetry: Hui changge de yiweihua and Shizuniao.

Works

• The mist of my heart: selected poems of Shu Ting, Translator William O'Donnell, Panda Books, 1995, ISBN 978-0-8351-3148-3
• Shu Ting: Selected Poems (ed. by Eva Hung). Hong Kong: Renditions Paperbacks, 1994.
• "Shu Ting", Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, Vol. 16, 1984

Anthology inclusions

• "Smoking People" (PDF) 39 (2). Beloit Poetry Journal. Winter 1988–1989.
• Czeslaw Milosz, ed. (1998). "Perhaps". A Book of Luminous Things: An International Anthology of Poetry. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 978-0-15-600574-6.
• Edward Morin, Fang Dai, eds. (1990). The Red azalea: Chinese poetry since the Cultural Revolution. Translator Edward Morin, Fang Dai, Dennis Ding. University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 978-0-8248-1320-8.
• William H. Roetzheim, ed. (2006). "Assembly Line". The Giant Book of Poetry. Level4Press Inc. ISBN 978-0-9768001-2-5.

References

1. "Shu Ting from Encyclopedia of Contemporary Chinese Culture". BookRags.com. 2004-12-17. Retrieved 2010-10-19.
2. "Shu Ting". China Literature. 2010-08-18. Retrieved 2010-10-19.
3. A Brief Guide to Misty Poets
4. "The Jackdaw's Nest: Shu Ting". Hedgeguard.blogspot.com. 2006-01-30. Retrieved 2010-10-19.
5. "Shu Ting". Web.whittier.edu. Retrieved 2010-10-19.
6. Tony Barnstone, Chou Ping, eds. (2010). The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry: From Ancient to Contemporary, The Full 3000-Year Tradition. Random House, Inc. ISBN 978-0-307-48147-4.
7. "Shu Ting". Renditions.org. Retrieved 2010-10-19.

External links

• An Apostrophe Cast episode with translations of Shu Ting's poems by Michael Swierz and Ying Xu.
• "Shu Ting", Renditions, a Chinese-English translation magazine, last accessed June 5, 2007
• "From the Archive: Carolyn Kizer and Shu Ting", poets.org