Duo Duo China

Bio
Duoduo, a member of the “Misty” school of modern Chinese poetry, was born in Beijing in 1951. During the Cultural Revolution, he was forced to become a farmhand. In 1975, he returned to Beijing, where he later worked as a library assistant and journalist. His poetry and short stories have been published in periodicals and anthologies since 1982. At Poetry International’s invitation for its 1989 festival, Duoduo made his first trip abroad and subsequently remained in the West as an exile. He lived for many years in the United Kingdom, Canada and the Netherlands, before returning to China where he now teaches at Hainan University.


What book would you like to snuggle under covers with, and why?
“I like to snuggle undercovers with the poetry of Paul Celan (translated to Chinese by Wang JaXin).
Paul Celan is the most important poet to me. I appreciate his language as much as I appreciate the empty spaces in his poems. I think the empty space is perhaps the original point of his creations. The way Paul Celan writes too short and his influence so long is a mystery I have not gotten the answer so far, but I am sure I’ll have to read his poetry for ever to find out."

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