My long poem, A Tank, has just been published in Open Field, an Australian-based digital magazine. Its mainly about me growing up in the Cultural Revolution, later surviving the Tiananmen Massacre and struggling as a woman in general. I also wrote about Tibetan self immolations and the plight of the Uighurs. If youre interested, you could get the magazine on openfield.au, click on a link on the right-hand side to download Issue 3 where my poem is. You could also download Issue 1 & 2, which are packed with great literature and art by a very interesting range of women writers and artists. Its only US$4 to download an issue. All proceeds will go to the charity, CARE. All contributors are women and none of us are getting paid. Many thanks to Chris Taylor for introducing me to Kirsten Alexander, the magazines editor who was very patient with me and did a great editing job. Kirsten is quite an accomplished novelist herself. This is my first poem to be published! Many thanks to my generous friends who commented and made suggestions after I posted it on FB in September, 2013. Among you guys Id like to specially thank Tom Tompel, Emilie Cappella, Bhu Nyamchung, Lobsang Tseringnorbu, Jim Terr and Gabriel Feinstein Jr. for making very valuable suggestions. And my big thanks to my therapist -- I started to write the poem after I broken down in front of her while talking about the massacre. It was my first time to feel the pain from the event, 25 years later. I didnt realize I had been living in the massacre everyday for all these years. The poem took me several weeks to write and another few weeks to recover from the catharsis. Since September, 2013, Ive revised the poem numerous times. I keep updating it because massacres in China, Tibet and East Turkestan have not stopped... A few friends and I made a shorter version of the poem into a video in May, which was shown at the Art & Democracy exhibition in Los Angeles. The video is here, https://vimeo/92047446 Many thanks to Jonathan Wood Vincent, Di Tang and Daniel Carter for being part of a great team to make this performance video.
Posted on: Wed, 02 Jul 2014 08:56:04 +0000
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