Chinese Poet Yu Xiuhua Featured at NYT

China's answer to Emily Dickinson, contemporary poet Yu Xiuhua, received a feature at the New York Times this week. "Her poems were discovered by Liu Nian, an editor at Poetry, a leading Chinese literary journal. Mr. Liu wrote about her and reprinted some of her works, and by February 2015 two volumes of her poetry had been published: 'In Such a Staggering World' and 'Moonlight Drops on My Left Hand.' The latter became the best-selling book of poetry in China in 30 years," writes Kiki Zhao, whose piece looks at the farmhouse-life Yu was used to, and contrasts it with her newfound fame.

For the record, Ms. Yu says she dislikes being compared with Dickinson, whom she has never read. In fact, her grounding in world literature is somewhat lacking, she said on a recent afternoon at her home in Hengdian.

Before she began writing poetry in her late 20s, she said, “I rarely read literature. I only started to read more famous works on my mobile phone after 2006. But I knew how to write before I read.”

“I like writing poems, because they’re simple and don’t have many words,” she said, speaking haltingly as her mouth twitched. “This suits me because I’m lazy.”

She now lives with her father in a newly built two-story house, a short walk from their old farmhouse. A recent village renovation razed most of the old buildings and moved residents into new housing, but her family home has been preserved as a tribute to a local celebrity.

She shrugs off the fame and the labels usually applied to her as a writer: female, peasant, disabled. She claims to be indifferent to readers’ reactions.

“Writing poems means facing myself, first and foremost, not facing others,” she said. “It’s to express myself. It’s other people’s business whether they respond to my poems. It has nothing to do with me.”

Read on at NYT