Creators on Creating: Xue Di

Could you share a bit of your background, how you came from Beijing to the United States? 
 
In June 1989, I participated in the democracy movement in Beijing. After the movement was crushed by the army with tanks and machine guns, my life was in danger due to the participation. At this time, I received the Hellman/Hammett Award, sponsored by the Fund for Free Expression, an affiliate of Human Rights Watch in New York. With this award, Brown University sent me an invitation as Visiting Scholar and Writer in Residence through the Freedom to Writing Program. Former president Vartan Gregorian and Professor Robert Coover together established this program within the Creative Writing Program for writers facing difficulties in their home countries. I gratefully accepted the invitation and came to the U.S. in January 1990.
 
Do you ever miss China?
 
Yes, tremendously.

What are some of the things you miss most of all, if you don't mind sharing?

I miss China's culture, the city of Beijing where I grew up, the people who cared for me during my difficult childhood, and numerous friends, many of them poets and artists. I miss the Chinese language, it still flows in my blood and veins, and through my brain when I speak. I miss my aging parents, although I talk with them on video every week. I carry my homeland with me wherever I live, through poetry and deep thinking, through perception of daily life. I certainly don’t miss the hardship and turbulence from China, but I grew up through them; I became stronger, a deeper thinker, more considerate and loving. I appreciate life very profoundly.   
 
How has your writing changed since coming from China? 
 
While I was in China, my writing was filled with emotion and resistance. Of course I was very focused on technique, too. The force of my writing was outwards, strong and rebellious. I had three books banned in mainland China right after the democracy movement was defeated by the government. After I came to this country, my living circumstances have been safe and much more peaceful. I can reflect on my life without fear and anger; I can feel the spirit of my living more closely, embrace nature, write more calmly and spiritually, focus on the details of my inner life. There is more light in my writing and a more nuanced technique in my poems.      
 
Who are some of your influences? Do you have any favorite Chinese poets?
 
There are many foreign poets I love, but three of them really influenced my writing. The Russian poet Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) was the first poet to influence my writing. His romantic and profound sense of nature and love; his gift for language and love of life; his ability to transfer everything into heartwarming beauty, that set me on the journey of writing poetry. I experienced great hardship in my childhood; my growing years took place within the nation’s turbulence, they all mixed to make my life extremely difficult. The reason I could withstand misery and chaos from my early life and environment was because my heart was polished by the beauty and love of poetry.
 
The French poet Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) was the second poet who significantly influenced my poetry writing. His sharp vision and expression on darkness, his poignancy and rage on human avarice and sin, his ability to penetrate the dark and reach the bottom of desperation with power, that set me on the journey of displaying power in my poetry writing. My youth provided enough misery as a source for me to emotionally present the darkness and hopelessness of human living; my country had enough ill fortune and horrible crimes against humanity as subjects for me to work with. I learned how to display power in my writing, that act paralleled my long buried anger and deep sorrow. I studied and researched different writing techniques and organized and arranged words creatively and precisely. I believe that is the only way to present the power and beauty of a poem. This writing technique and exercise was also displayed in Charles Baudelaire’s own poetry writing. By pursuing that, I felt that I gained power in my poetry writing, but I didn’t know that I was also sinking: sinking into a thick and suffocating darkness.
 
Then came William Yeats (1865-1939), the Irish poet, who taught me how to rise up from darkness and depression; how to enliven things long since gone; how to remember and sing from the ruins in our lives, how to see hope and joy ahead and put human crimes against the spirit behind. He taught me in a beautiful and melodic tone.
  
I like Chinese classic poetry, and there are some poets I deeply admire. 
 
You write in Across Borders (Green Integer, 2013), "My poems grasp for others like me – if but to hold them." Could you talk about the role of poetry in your life?
 
As I mentioned in the last question, poetry saved my life. Poetry holds me and lifts me up from my miserable childhood and China's chaotic modern history. I see the beauty and sunshine and melodies from poetry, I see the bottomless kindness and deep penetration to humankind, I feel the history of generations of living: their struggles, their efforts, their triumph and failures; most important, their songs to live. So, I write, I sing, I rebuke the darkness from living. I display the details of writing, to catch the subtle beauty, to comfort those who understand the poetry. Poetry is the meaning of my life. My poems grasp for others like me – if but to hold them, yes.      
 
Your poems are translated from Mandarin to English – do you have any strong feelings or thoughts on the art of translation? 
 
My poems have been translated largely by Keith Waldrop along with the translators who know Chinese very well. I deeply appreciate Keith and other translators! The translation is precise and refined; I am happy with the work. I am looking for new translators who can work on the first draft of the translations. I recently completed a manuscript translated by Dong Li and Chard DeNiord, and I will be looking for publication soon.    
 
Do you have any favorite writing rituals? Do you work on one thing at a time or have multiple projects going on at once? 
 
I don’t have a special writing ritual. When I write a book, or a series of poems, I write when I awaken, when my mind is fresh and clean, with nothing mixing in yet. I usually write for three hours and don’t write any longer than that, since after three hours of intense focus, my writing can become loose and the quality can be affected. I then will take a break and do other things, and in the afternoon, I will go back to the poem and transfer it to the computer. I usually write on paper. When I type it on screen, I will do another round of revision. I don’t work on multiple writing projects, since I want to be fully focused on what I am doing in the present moment.     
 
What are you working on now? 
 
I am in the final stage of proofreading a completed manuscript in Chinese and English. I have a few manuscripts in English I would like to complete and publish.
 
Do you have any advice for young aspiring poets?
 
Read, read, more masterpieces; review your own writing while reading. Live fully and experience life as much as you can. Listen to your inner voices, there are always inner voices but most of time they are obscured by daily life. Solitude helps to reach in deeply. When writing, let your imagination run, run, and run; pay great attention to the technique, to details. Details of your feelings, perceptions, connections, and learnings. All these sensations, plus your own character and your own life experiences blend together to become your style. When you find your style, hold it firmly and develop it to the extreme; that will be your own voice in poetry.   

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Xue Di was born in Beijing.  He is the author of four volumes of collected works and one book of criticism on contemporary Chinese poetry in Chinese. In English translation, he has published five full length books and four chapbooks. His work has appeared in numerous American journals and anthologies and has been translated into several languages. Xue Di is a two-time recipient of the Hellman/Hammett Award, a recipient of the Artemis A. Joukowsky fellowship through Brown University, and a recipient of the Lannan Foundation Fellowship.

Read "The Passage to Heaven" by Xue Di

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