Ouyang Yu
Interview with Ouyang Yu
'And I have since been doing a number of new self-initiated projects, like the book-destruction project. I can only tell you this much. All these, in the end, are failure projects. A poet is born to fail, after all, so it’s quite fitting that he does all that.'
'No but I hardly feel part of the literary and artistic community that is called Australia. I write, I live in this country, I send stuff out, I get rejected and I hardly get invited to any events, literary or artistic. But that doesn’t stop me from writing. As for whose taste matters, I’d say no one’s taste matters to me. I once said that reading Ouyang Yu is an acquired taste and that’s what it is. If you don’t like what I write, well and fine. I don’t care. I create my own taste. I cater to no one’s taste.'
The Case for China or a Self-obituary
He did not give them a definition of what poetry was. He did not show them examples of best poetry. He did not provide them with a list of works by the best poets to read. He eschewed all that. Instead, he said to all of them, about thirty of them in class: You are all poets, even if you have never written a single line in either Chinese, your mother tongue, or English, your potential father tongue. Today is the day I want you to write your first poems.