Ouyang Yu
Ouyang Yu
Ouyang Yu graduated from La Trobe University with a doctoral degree in Australian literature. He has published more than twenty books in Chinese and English in the fields of fiction, poetry, literary translation and literary criticism. His first novel, The Eastern Slope Chronicle, was short-listed for the 2003 NSW Premier’s Awards. His third book of poetry, Foreign Matter, won the 2003 Fast Books Prize for Best Poetry in the self-published category in NSW, Australia.
Ouyang Yu is a skilled poet, critic, academic, translator and prose-writer. Operating in two languages and closely, caustically interrogating Australia’s cultural identity and diversity, Yu’s work typifies a present future of Australian poetry. His work matches a strident political voice with a tightly tuned lyrical self. Yu’s often savage humour is matched by his musical gifts as a technician-poet, and his unrelenting ability to sheer a subject back to its basic truths and half-truths. Clear-eyed scepticism betrays a generous plain-speaking heart, which has led to his successes as a poet internationally. His is a voice to attend not simply for its poetry but its insight into the broader and immediate contemporary world beyond poetry.
Bibliography
Poetry
In English:
Moon over Melbourne and Other Poems. Papyrus Publishing, Scarsdale 1995.
Songs of the Last Chinese Poet. Wild Peony, Sydney 1997.
Two Hearts, Two Tongues and Rain-Coloured Eyes. University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu 2002.
Foreign Matter. Otherland Publishing, Melbourne 2003.
New And Selected Poems. Salt Publishing, Cambridge 2004.
In Chinese:
Summer in Melbourne. 1998.
Cunt Sequence. Otherland Publishing, Melbourne 2000.
Wo Cao. Otherland Publishing, Melbourne 2003.
The Limit. Otherland Publishing, Melbourne 2003.
Fiction
The Eastern Slope Chronicle. Pluto Press, Sydney 2002.
Translations
From English into Chinese:
The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer, 1991; new edition 2002.
Fly Away Peter by David Malouf, 1994.
Tirra Lirra by the River by Jessica Anderson, 1996.
The Ancestor Game by Alex Miller, 1996.
The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead, 1999.
Julia Paradise by Rod Jones, 1999.
That Eye, the Sky by Tim Winton, 1999.
Capricornia by Xavier Herbert, 2003.
The Whole Woman by Germaine Greer, 2002.
The Shock of the New by Robert Hughes, 2003.
From Chinese into English:
Bitter Peaches and Plums (co-translated with Bruce Jacobs), 1996.
In Your Face: Contemporary Chinese Poetry in English Translation, 2002.
Links
Listen to poems by Ouyang Yu on Red Room Poetry
With extensive biographical and bibliographical info.
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