How do you think your poetry style has changed over the years?

Memory is most important — because memory is the survival basis for an individual or a collective. When we insist in continuously remembering with all our efforts, our old anxieties will truly falter.

This question brings into my mind an email my husband Wang Lixong wrote me when we first met. His words had a huge impact on me, enough to upheave my “art-for-art-sake” writing. He said, “Tibet’s present plight is sorrowful, but to a writer who documents, it is the perfect timing. So many legends, bravery, betrayals, falls, longing, separation as well as the mournings and hopes of an ancient people survive around you… you can write poetry and novels, but don’t forget to turn more of your attention to non-fictional work. That would be even more meaningful for your people.”

Also, for me, in terms of my present-day form and writing style, I’m slowly actualizing the self-expression of a “Tibetan identity.” This identity is closely interlinked with Tibetan geography, history and culture, as well as countless Tibetans’ life stories and fate.

Yes, identity and autobiography, biography as well as the biography of an entire nationality is closely connected, otherwise where should we begin as far as the question of identity? In terms of individual narration or re-narration of others’ life experiences, it is in fact also a way of regaining individual and collective memories. Memory is most important — because memory is the survival basis for an individual or a collective. When we insist in continuously remembering with all our efforts, our old anxieties will truly falter. You can say that re-narrating life experiences is also a form of therapy. At least this is the case for me.

It looks as though you write less poetry these days and more articles and essays for your blog and books. Why? Do you miss writing poetry?

Mémoire interdite : Témoignages sur la Révolution culturelle au Tibet
BY Woeser
TRANSLATED FROM THE CHINESE
BY Li AND Bernard Bourrit
(Gallimard / Bleu de Chine, 2010)

I’ve always believed I’m a poet. To a certain extent, I’ve always been writing poems. Regardless of whether prose, hybrid essay or novel, I always believe it to be poetry. In Chinese language, the character “poetry” (诗) is composed of “speech” (言) and “temple” (寺). This also means that a poet is an orator, an orator who, at the same time, has a mission, upholds an aesthetic, and shares religious sentiments. Thus, to be a poet also means to be a witness, a memorist, so as to become an orator of authority.

In writing, inspiration or talent is the same thing, whereas a professionalized working method is a way of normalizing one’s working situation. Today, I don’t rely merely on the occasional flashes of inspiration. Of course, poets have different aesthesis in response to beauty, and through writing, they weave it into words. So I believe I’m always writing poetry, and have never missed out on writing poetry.

Deep down in my heart, I also have a personal reason. As I wrote in an epilogue for my collection, The Whiteness of The Snowland:

A poem comes to my mind, not one of mine but one written by Tibet’s greatest poet, the Sixth Dalai Lama Tsangyang Gyatso. I really love this poem:

Small black letters, written,
Vanish with water drop.
Mind pictures, unwritten,
Though effaced, will not fade.

—FROM Songs of Love, Poems of Sadness: The Erotic Verse of the Sixth Dalai Lama
BY Dalai Lama VI, TRANSLATED BY Paul Williams

Dear father Tsering Dorje, the poem I want to dedicate to you is still being written. Because the voice I am longing to hear is in the air, about to land. In the end you will be relieved to know – when that voice finally lands in the heart, only then is the true poet formed like the dousing of the fire phoenix!

— ORIGINALLY CONDUCTED IN CHINESE, THIS INTERVIEW IS TRANSLATED BY GRETA AART AND DECHEN PEMBA