Lyrical Experiments in Sinophone Verse: Time, Space, Bodies, and Things

The 1919 May Fourth movement was the breeding ground for experiments by authors inspired by new world literary trends. Under Mao Zedong, folk songs accompanied political campaigns such as the Great Leap Forward. Misty Poetry of the 1980s contributed to the humanistic discourse of the post-Mao reform era. The most recent stage in Chinese poetry resonates with contemporary concerns, such as technological innovation, environmental degradation, socio-political transformations, and the return of geopolitical Cold War divisions. In search of creative responses to the crisis, poets frequently revisit the past while holding on to their poetic language of self-reflection and social critique. This volume identifies three foci in contemporary poetry discourses: formal crossovers, multiple realities, and liquid boundaries. These three themes often intersect within texts from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan discussed in the book.

Justyna Jagu.cik is a senior lecturer in Chinese language, culture and history at the University of Bern. She is the co-editor of Sinophone Utopias: Explorations of Chinese Future Beyond the China Dream (Cambria Press, 2023) and the author of book chapters and essays on contemporary female-authored Chinese-language poetry, and independent trans-Asian theater and cultural activism. Joanna Krenz is an assistant professor at Adam Mickiewicz University in Pozna.. Her research interests revolve around contemporary literature, with particular focus on Chinese poetry, in intercultural and interdisciplinary contexts, including its interactions with natural sciences and technology. She is the author of In Search of Singularity: Poetry in Poland and China Since 1989 (Brill 2022) and an active translator of Chinese modern poetry and fiction into Polish. Andrea Riemenschnitter is professor em. of Modern Chinese Language and Literature, University of Zurich. Her most recent book is Sinophone Utopias. Exploring Futures Beyond the China Dream (2023, co-ed.). She has published in Archiv Orientalni, AS, ICCC, Interventions, JMLC, MCLC, Monumenta Serica, etc.