Could you perhaps begin with the relationship between personal experience and poetry? While the text or culture is at times relatively clear in Chen Yuhong’s work, the personal experience is quite obscure. I find it easier to perceive the function of personal experience in Amang’s poems.

Chen: My parents moved to Taiwan from Shanghai in May 1949. My father’s ancestral home is Nanhai in Guangdong province, and my mother’s is Suzhou, but they settled in Shanghai since they were young. My mother tongue is Shanghainese (上海話), and I only learned Mandarin when I entered elementary school. Because of my father’s job, I was quite accustomed to the situation of “the coexistence of Chinese and foreign people” (華洋共處). But the reason I studied in the foreign language department at university was that I was really bad at mathematics and physics. Living in Vancouver for over a decade allowed me to read British and American poems, and truly, I am very much influenced by Western poets.

…any incident could only serve as the starting point (or the source of inspiration) for creation. It does not need to replace the entire creation.

For me, writing poetry is absolutely from experience. If my creations contain the so-called feminine characteristics, it must be natural, because all my sensibility is experienced and gained through my feminine body/ identity. Luckily, growing up, my environment was very peaceful and pleasant. I have never been discriminated against or suppressed because of my feminine identity. Rather, I have sometimes been favored because of it. Perhaps this has been due to the fact that I have had few negative experiences, it is difficult for my creation to be sharp.

Amang: Ever since I was young, I knew that boys and girls are treated differently. I was brought up by my grandparents. My parents planted trees on the mountain, and my grandmother, who was over sixty, lived near the base with the four of us kids. Life was hard, and my grandmother had to earn money and make a living. My older brother had his own study room and desk, and was seldom scolded. But we three girls were often scolded. My grandmother was good at using dirty words, which seemed easy for her. Those words were full of images like genitals. Once she chased me to a line of trees near the river, and I ran back and forth between the green and red leaves to avoid her poisonous arrows. I hated my grandmother at that time. Her scolding us with dirty words was our first sex education. We girls knew nothing, and naturally tried to escape and resist. I don’t know if this is a fitting metaphor for relating personal experience to poetry. Later, when I began to write poems, one of the inspirations was the discomfort, doubt, or resistance I felt in my heart.

For instance, if I heard a car hit a little girl, that was a sound I had never heard. I did not dare to watch, but the sound would remain in my mind for months and months, until I made it disappear by writing poems. One summer, a car ran over a snake, and the snake burst into pieces. The sound stayed in my mind like unmelted snow, because I never finished writing “That Poem” (那一首). Also, a movie made me hurt from my throat to my esophagus to stomach. The pain would not go away until I wrote it out. When I was ten years old, I moved from Hualian to Taipei. The sky became narrower, the sea tamer, and people were more cultured… The discomfort because of these changes could sometimes be resolved by climbing mountains, but the deeper discomfort always needed to be resolved through writing. Creation is like deep breath, bringing me oxygen and freedom.

This is why your poems are quite vivacious. Is it an inheritance from your grandmother?

Amang: Ha! I never thought of it that way before. Who knows, maybe poetry is another kind of dirty word? I run and escape to trees, while keeping in mind the dirty words?

In a photo you once gave me, you were on a tree. I think what you say is quite true. The relationship between the era and the individual is an interesting topic. Personally, I don’t mean to speak for our era, and don’t have any clear sense of social responsibilities, but once in a while, I unconsciously write poems that are closely related with our era — even though most of the time they are not directly connected. What do both of you think of this? Do you have a conscious response to the era or society? Is individuality — or privacy — the most fundamental?

Chen: Personal experience first comes from one’s family background, followed by the society/era in which one lives. Everyone has their own characteristics, but personalization is absolutely comprised of family, society, and the era. Composers create with their personal background/experience, thus each of them has his/her own characteristics. This is the reason why there are differences not only in subjects and imagery, but also in vocabulary / grammar / rhythm. Take for instance, the differences between the Taiwanese poets, Ya Xian (瘂弦) and Yang Mu (楊牧) or Guan Guan (管管) and Wu Sheng (吳晟).

Each era has its own creation, expression, and concentrated issues. I can only write about my own experience, and it only happens here and now. Once, I wrote “Selling a Small Kidney” after reading that a young man sold his kidney to buy luxury goods. I also wrote the poem, “The Homeless Dog Blooming like Christmas Flowers,” after witnessing a dog killed by a traffic accident. But any incident could only serve as the starting point (or the source of inspiration) for creation. It does not need to replace the entire creation. In the impermanency of a given time and place, I think I’d prefer to seize the more common, more basic — and possibly the deeper and more emotional side of human nature.