1. Places and seasons play an integral role in your poetry, both lyrically and theatrically. I think of Nanjing, Chongqing, and summer, for example. How do you reconcile, revisit and reinvigorate time and space as compositional elements in your poetic creation?
3. In your most recent sequenced poems — such as "The Book of Tibet", "Gift" and "Notes from the Late Qing " — that hybridize prose with verse, as well as different voices, musicalities and narratives, you employ various linguistic registers. How do you relate to such a multi-layered poetic structure, its emotional responses and interpretation?
4. Ezra Pound says, "Make it new." You have a skilful way of making the language both “new” and "fresh" when it comes to developing an unique signature in Chinese in terms of the language as a tradition, but with neither the antecedents of a so-called "modern" poetry nor the preconceived "traditional." In "A Year of Chronicles in Suzhou" and "In Qing Dynasty," for instance, the ancient idioms (chengyu), proverbs (suyu) and sayings (guanyongyu) are able to express intention: they speak and show without telling. As a contemporary poet, how do you engage with the "tradition" during the interior process of writing? As a contemporary reader, how do you approach the so-called classical Chinese poetry?
6. As a representative figure of the post-"Misty" poets, what are your thoughts about the tides of poetry and artistic search in the present-day China?
10. How do you keep your inquisitiveness — as an artist, an individual and a human being — constantly alive in an ideologically-driven state and culture? How do you nourish your spiritual/interior life?
12. Beyond writing, what is meaningful in life for you? How would you like to reach out towards a wider humanity?
写作之外，生命中什么对你有意义？你想怎么伸展诗笔对人性作更深更远的探寻？
第一个问题：家庭对我是特别有意义的。
第二个问题：人之一生，春夏秋冬。不同的时间——思或诗——总是不同的；但也唯有不同，才能扩展（wider）你的思或诗。譬如，当你年轻时仰望天空，你会脱口说出济慈（John Keats）的一行诗：“When I have fears that I may cease to be”（每当我恐惧我将死去）；后来，你可能会念出这一句“逝者如斯不舍昼夜。”（孔子）
年龄将使你改变，犹如河流在河水的冲刷下会将河面变得更加开阔。活到70岁，你就可以随心所欲而不逾矩了（孔子）。而博尔赫斯（Jorge Luis Borges）却在《诗艺》（This Craft Of Verse）中说：“我希望自己在67岁人生成熟的年纪达到真正的快乐。”
6 more questions
提问者：Fiona Sze-Lorrain
回答者：柏桦
完成时间：2011-07-01
1. Can you define your work in terms of what you try to address and speak to, what its emotional contents are, and the stylistic devices that serve as its driving force?
5. Your comment about "overly feminine men and overly masculine women" is very interesting. The question of gendering in poetics — particularly in a masculine broth such as the contemporary Chinese poetry scene — can be a delicate and complex issue. What are your thoughts? How does the gender of the poet politicize his/her work?
真要让我说出"overly feminine men and overly masculine women"的有关思想还颇要费些力气。有关此点，请允许我——引来我于1984年春天写出的《我的早期诗观》中的第一段——回答如下：
6. You see the mysterious and the inexplicable as a vital presence in poetry. Do you feel that emotional honesty should and can be compromised for ambiguity?
In Le Balcon,which M.Valery considers,and I think rightly,one of Baudelaire’s most beautiful poems,there is all the romantic idea, but something more : the reaching out towards something which cannot be had in, but which may be had partly through, personal realations. Indeed,in much romantic poetry the sadness is due to the exploitation of the fact that no human realations are adequate to human desires, but also to the disbelief in any further object for human desires that which, being human, fails to satisfy them.
Can you define your own poetry in terms of what you try to speak to, what your subjects are and also can you say what stylistic devices or special technical concerns are important to your poetry?
Fiona Sze-Lorrain writes and translates in French, English and Chinese. Author of Water the Moon(Marick Press, 2010), she is co-director of Vif éditions and one of the editors at Cerise Press. She is also a zheng concertist.