Poet

Chen Li

(Taiwan, 1954)

Biography

Chen Li studied and taught English in his native town of Hualian on the east coast of Taiwan, from which he has never moved. Taking part in this year's Poetry International Festival has been his first trip abroad. In an article entitled 'The Traveller' he once observed: 'So long as I keep longing for the outside world, I'm always underway.

I realize that my fifty students sitting in my classroom are fifty different travel guides to as many different cities. I know that the hearts of the people I meet every day in the streets and the market place are just as rich as all the places of interest in the whole wide world. I double all these cities in my city, and I travel all over the world in my world.'

Chen Li reads to keep himself informed of what goes on in the world and he writes about it in his poetry: the outside world is what matters, with its people, their fates and their responsibilities. In highly individual metaphors, Chen Li writes about people shaken by earthquakes or consumed with longing, people mourning the loss of their innocence, craving some dignity, fearing the onslaught of time.

Chen Li began writing poetry in the early 1970s. Although clearly consistent in his themes, he has never stopped experimenting with style and form, thus creating an oeuvre of great diversity. Next to social satire there are tributes to his favourite writers, musicians and artists, often seasoned with puns, such as the title 'An Open Cage - for John Cage'. Chen Li is also a poetry translator, with renderings of Szymborska, Plath, Heaney, Neruda and Paz to his name.

[Chen Li took part in the Poetry International Festival Rotterdam 1999. This text was written on that occasion.]