Chinese Name: 白萩
Birth Name: Ho Chin-jong (何錦榮)
Date of Birth: June 8, 1937
Date of Death: January 11, 2023
Place of Birth: Taichung City (Central Taiwan)
Did You Know?
Born during the period of Japanese rule over Taiwan, Bai Chiu grew up at a time of rapid cultural, political, economic, and social change in Taiwan. Even the language used in daily life changed from Taiwanese and Japanese to Mandarin. As a result, Bai had an ability to quickly shift between linguistic forms, breaking through barriers and bringing novelty and keenness of observation and judgment to his poems. His lifelong commitment to the art of poetry brought a pioneering and innovative spirit to the poetry scene in Taiwan, and he remains highly respected.
Born Ho Chin-jong in 1937 in Taichung, Bai Chiu graduated from the Provincial Taichung High School of Commerce (now National Taichung University of Science and Technology). In 1955, he won the first New Poetry Award from the Chinese Writers' and Artists' Association for his poem "The Compass (羅盤)" and was hailed as a genius poet. Having lived through both Japanese rule and the Nationalist government’s setting down in Taiwan, Bai was part of a generation whose linguistic habits were suddenly ruptured, and his writings were driven by the social turmoil caused by the change of political power in the country, his poor living conditions, and the death of his mother when he was 16 years of age.
He worked for the Department of Education of Taiwan Province and the National Agricultural College of Taiwan (now National Chung Hsing University), and also ran companies in the furniture, advertising, interior design, and publishing industries. Throughout, however, he continued to create. Bai's poetic art rose to prominence at a time when contemporary poetry was blossoming in Taiwan, and he was part of the Blue Star Poetry Society (藍星詩社), the Contemporary Poetry Society (現代派), and the Epoch Poetry Quarterly (創世紀詩社). In 1964, Bai and Lin Heng-tai (林亨泰) founded the Li Poetry Society (笠詩社), a group of twelve poets with roots in the most representative poetry societies of post-war Taiwan. No matter where he was working, he never let it limit his approach to poetry, constantly evolving and innovating in form and subject matter.
The poetry scene in Taiwan in the 1960s was feeling the influence of modernism, which overemphasized innovation in form and language at the expense of realism, resulting in obtuse, incomprehensible poems. In view of this, the Li Poetry Society gathered local poets, advocating simplicity and authenticity, emphasizing the local spirit of Taiwan, and gradually moving closer to realism.
During the period of martial law, Bai Chiu still created many works with political references, protests, and criticisms, confronting and analyzing the cruel realities of society with his verbal art and writing about the cold and frightening political environment. He drew his material from real life, visualized and dramatized it, and conveyed the profound absurdity and helplessness of real life.
Bai's poetry straddles the line between modernism and realism, and his creative evolution can be divided into four stages. The first stage, represented by the poem "The Death of the Moth (蛾之死)," was characterized by a modernist experimental style, experimenting with imagery as a means of expression. The second stage, represented by "Roses in the Wind (風的薔薇)," focused on expressing the plight of the lone individual caught in a desolate world with no one to turn to and no way to escape. In the third stage, poems like "Symbolic of the Sky (天空象徵)” proved to be a turning point for Bai's poetic language, moving toward a more a realist style and the use of more vernacular language, which also can be seen in his other works like “Chansons (香頌)" and "Poetry Square (詩廣場)”. In the fourth stage, more than a dozen representative poems spanning 20 years as collected in the anthology "Images Drawn from Measurement and Observation (觀測意象)" show a shift from the modernist style and experimental forms to a realism built on keen observation of the modern world.
Bai Chiu was a poet with a distinctive style, a keen ability to manipulate language, and an experimental spirit, which made his poems stand out for their vivid imagery and profound meaning. With a dense, rich imagination, his creations were devoted to exploring life without piling on the excessively literary verbiage and were rich in profound rhyme and tragic spirit. The evolution of his poetic style is closely related to the evolution of poetry in post-war Taiwan, with different creative concepts revealing themselves at each stage.
Bai Chiu received the Wu San-lien Literary Arts Award, the Taichung City Dadun Literary Award for Contribution to Literature, and the Taiwan New Literature Contribution Award. Many of his works have been translated into foreign languages, including English, French, Japanese, Korean, and German. He was hailed as the most representative of dissident poets in Taiwan for his satirical poem "Ah Huo’s World (阿火世界)." The book of his collected poems was published in 1971 and continued to be reprinted by the publisher until 2021, reflecting his status as a classic poet.