Tianjin Updates

‘Song of Inner Mongolia’: poetry of prairie culture

(exploringtianjin.com)

Updated: 2020-10-09

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A book launch for poet and journalist Wu Ziran’s latest volume of poems, ‘Song of Inner Mongolia’, was held in Tianjin on Sept 29. [Xinhua]

A book launch for the well-known poet and journalist Wu Ziran’s latest volume of poems, “Song of Inner Mongolia”, was held in Tianjin on Sept 29.

This event was sponsored by Tianjin Publishing and Media Group Co and Baihua Literature and Art Publishing House.

Wu worked in the "Hongshan Evening News" in North China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region for 11 years, and has been working for "Economic Daily" since 2003. He also won many awards and honorary titles for news coverage.

In the 1980s, he began to write poetry and since then has published more than 500 poems in magazines and newspapers and also a collection of poems “Red Cherry with Tears”. His book "Ziran’s Poetry" was published in 2017 and was shortlisted for the China's prestigious Lu Xun Literature Prize the next year.

The latest volume “Song of Inner Mongolia” is his third work. It includes more than 100 poems presenting his thoughts and compliments on the grasslands, mountains, culture and the Mongolian horse spirit of his hometown in Inner Mongolia. Readers will be enabled to feel the magnificent feelings of the Mongolian plateau.

Based on Wu’s love of this land, the poems not only express the author’s subjective mentality and personal feelings, but also delineate the development and changes of China’s reform and opening-up over the past 40 years.

Also, the poems, which derive from Mongolian long-tunes and music, reveal big things from small perspectives and encourage people to strive with sincerity for a better life.

Some Mongolian language chunks are interspersed in the poems with annotations added at the end to interpret them. The book also offers some poems shown in both Chinese and Mongolian, which shows the poet’s deep feelings for his mother language and increases the poems’ impact on cultural memory.

The short-chapter writing method is conducive to capturing images, conveying philosophies, and recording the beauty of the moment. Its language makes a powerful impact with its natural and rich connotations.

Jidimajia, a famous poet and vice president of the China Writers Association, wrote a prelude for the book.

According to Jidimajia, Wu’s poetry is deeply influenced by the natural elements, historical genes and cultural accumulation of local culture. What is more gratifying is that it absorbs and inherits the essence of grassland civilization, and poetically demonstrates the unique charm of collective personality.

The well-known critic Lei Fuxuan gave a speech at the session. He said that the entire collection is full of deep love for the Mongolian grasslands. It is truly a classic masterpiece by a Han person born in Mongolia describing the natural mysteries of Mongolian culture.

“The poetry collection is permeated with the fragrance of the grassland, the sweetness of milk, the vastness of the blue sky, the broad mind, and the vivid Mongolian elements, full of the poet’s gratitude and respect for the grassland,” Lei said, “The poet discovers and filters out impurities and restores the authenticity of past years.”

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