What were your feelings when Notes on Tibet was banned by the Chinese government? Did it come as a surprise or were you expecting it? Did that particular experience affect your approach to poetry?

Map of Maroon Red
BY Woeser
(China Travel & Tourism Press, 2004)

Ah, to be honest, when Notes on Tibet was banned, I was a little shocked. I’m actually very slow in certain aspects, thinking that others would understand the stories I wrote, and in other words, they would not be banned since they are true stories. This shows that I’m really rather foolish. In fact, after Notes on Tibet was completed, a few major publishing houses in Beijing had all read the manuscript, and greatly appreciated my writing. However, they all expressed their wish that I delete certain passages, edit certain words in order to publish the work. Although at that time I was very willing to be published in Beijing, I was not willing to adopt their editorial suggestions. This was why the manuscript was held up for more than a year in some publishing houses in Beijing, before it was sent to a famous publishing house in Guangzhou in 2002. My editor thought my writing was as beautiful as poetry, but interestingly, she did not even know who the Dalai Lama was. (Of course things are different today. After the 2008 unrest in Tibet, due to the Chinese government’s demonising propaganda, most of the Chinese today know the Dalai Lama as the “devil in a monk’s robe.”) This was why after the ban of Notes on Tibet, she was very shocked, and was forced to undergo self-criticism a few times.

The ban on Notes on Tibet, and the subsequent ban on Map of Maroon Red published in Beijing the year after, are important turning points in my writing and my life. This also means that I turn from the unconscious realist writing from the past to conscious realist writing. But what remains unchanged is the beauty of language as my pursuit in writing.

Two of my favourite poems of yours are “Derge” and “A Mala That Was Meant to Be,” which are dedicated to or about your father. How did his death impact your writings? Did he share your love of literature and was he supportive of your chosen career as a writer?

Although my father did not quite understand my poetry at the beginning, he was very encouraging.

Tibet Above
BY Woeser
(Qinghai People's Publishing Press, 1999)

In 1999, my first book of poetry, Tibet Above, was published by Qinghai People’s Publishing Press. I burnt every page of the book before my father’s tomb. Flames rapidly swept away each and every black character, as if each poem composed by these words were carried off to another world. I knew he’d be relieved, comforted by the fact that I’ve become an acknowledged poet, even if he couldn’t understand the poeticism.

But the poems I now write, especially “Tibet’s Secret,” my father would understand them right away. What would he say? Would he still let me continue writing poems? After all, I took a different road.

In fact, later on, perhaps my father had already foreseen that writing poetry would change his daughter into someone else, into the kind of person he worried about, so he did not quite wish to let me continue writing poetry. He’d rather I become a journalist, a photojournalist, a news journalist… To be a poet is too dangerous. But I didn’t heed his words. He’d often warn me to “walk with two legs,” meaning I could walk the path I’ve chosen, but must also walk the path designated by society and environment. One leg to walk one’s road, the other to walk the road that most take. I asked in return, “If we walk with two legs, will one of them break eventually?” He didn’t answer.

Perhaps, it could be as what poet Derek Walcott, Nobel Prize Laureate in 1992, who grew up during the British colonial years, had written:

I wasn’t sure if I could already express myself lucidly. Anyway, I had too many dreams. The most compelling dream was to write a book. In the book, I’d always be a daughter, a daughter who loves deeply her father. I would have many questions to ask him. The most urgent question: Has the road I’m now taking betrayed him? Should he be alive, would he be angry with me today? On the other hand, I stubbornly believe who knows, he might be secretly happy that I’d fulfilled a secret and unrevealed wish of his.