Chinese Name: 零雨
Birth Name: Wang Meei-chyn (王美琴)
Date of Birth: February 14, 1952
Place of Birth: Taipei County (Northern Taiwan)
Did You Know?
Ling Yu, who creates Chinese-language poetry, also has a great love for Western contemporary literature. She particularly admires Russian literature and the literatures of South America. She has read and reread the works of Russian writer of Ukrainian origin Nikolai Gogol, and playwright Anton Chekhov. As for South American writers, her favorite is the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges.
Taiwanese poet Ling Yu was born in 1952 with the given name Wang Meei-chyn. After graduating from the Chinese Department of National Taiwan University, she pursued a Master’s degree in East Asian Literature at the University of Wisconsin in the United States. She has served as a visiting scholar at Harvard University and as the chief editor of the literary quarterly "Modern Poetry (現代詩)." Since high school, Ling Yu has read extensively, covering a wide range of genres including poetry, prose, and fiction from both classical and modern writers, but she has read novels the most. After graduating from college, she was determined to become a novelist and devoted herself to writing novels. However, her experience of writing novels was quite painful, as in the days before computers were common, she had to write everything by hand and redo everything when making revisions. For a short story of about 5,000 words, she had to handwrite at least 20,000 words. Ling Yu once joked that "After finishing a novel, I feel like I’ve been through a catastrophe."
Later, Ling Yu found that writing poetry was more relaxing, and she started writing New Poetry in 1982, with her first poem "Sunrise (日出)." In 1990, she published her first poetry collection, “Series on a City (城的連作),” followed by several works in the following years including "Names Lost on a Map (消失在地圖上的名字)," "An Acrobat Family (特技家族),” “Collected Songs of Winter Trees (木冬詠歌集)," "Recountings of the Hometown (關於故鄉的一些計算)," "I Am Heading for You (我正前往你)," "The Pastoral Idyll / 5:49 PM (田園 ∕ 下午五點四十九分)," "Once, Up Hearing the Skin Tone (膚色的時光)," and "Daughters (女兒)."
Ling Yu's poetry often transcends gender, age, and geography. "Series on a City" explores the loneliness of life, doubts about urban living, and longing for rural daily life; "Names Lost on a Map" seeks a language of poetry from the material of painting, and also contains historical sentiments; "An Acrobat Family" addresses surreal dreams and illusions, exhibiting an acrobatic sensitivity and conflict; "Collected Songs of Winter Trees" focuses more on structure, using longer poems to address political issues and the poet’s spiritual thoughts; In "Recountings of the Hometown," Ling Yu writes with deep emotion about nostalgia and memories of her hometown. In "I Am Heading for You," a train experience becomes a direct and impactful image, and the atmosphere of nightmares intensifies as Ling Yu confronts the harm that capitalism inflicts on humanity. In "Daughters," published in 2022, Ling Yu not only uses poetry to recall her deceased mother, but also presents the perspectives of multiple different “daughters,” revealing women’s struggles of survival and resistance, and questioning and breaking free from patriarchal thinking.
Ling Yu has stated that she began writing poetry after the age of 30, and afterwards, she dove headfirst into the unfamiliar world of the art. When she won an annual poetry award for "An Acrobat Family," she began to understand how to express her inner feelings through poetry. Poetry is a metaphorical art, and Ling Yu hides individual messages on a more subtle level without directly revealing herself. Ling Yu believes that life experiences are precious. She has stated that a large part of her writing is to reminisce, which is undoubtedly futile, but it is precisely because it is futile that reconstruction becomes possible and can give meaning.
Ling Yu has found that life itself is poetry, rather than searching for traces of poetry in life. She believes that when creating poetry, the most important thing to avoid is deliberately piling up flowery language. Some people prefer to use words performatively and immerse readers in the poetic feel of the words, but in doing so, they overlook the content of the poetry, which is not what Ling Yu wants to pursue.
(Photo courtesy of Ling Yu)