Under the guidance of the Poetry Committee of the China Writers Association and the Chengdu Municipal Federation of Literature and Literature, the Caotang Poetry Journal and the Chengdu Commercial Newspaper were jointly established and built, and officially set sail in January this year, and the three-month-long collection and selection work was recently concluded.
On April 13th, the second "Caotang Poetry Award" award ceremony was held in Chengdu Du Fu Caotang Museum, and the four major awards were announced one by one. Among them, Wang Xiaoni won the Poet of the Year Award, with a prize of 50,000 yuan.
↑Wang Xiaoni won the Poet of the Year Award
Wang Xiaoni, born in Changchun and later living in Shenzhen, worked as a film and literature editor and served as a professor at the School of Humanities and Communication of Hainan University. He has published more than thirty kinds of poems, including the poetry collection "Moonlight", "Snow Falling in the Sea", the essay collection "Lesson Record", and the novel "1966".
↑ Wang Xiaoni
The jury believes that Wang Xiaoni has always been in an authentic state of writing, with a good sense of intuition and language, with a simple, frank and free temperament, to continuously bring us aesthetic pleasure and how to think about how to exist. Her poems start from the specific experience of life, often penetrating the essence of things, reproducing the bittersweet and bittersweet of life, and expressing the many conditions of life. Her keen ability to observe enriches the imagination of poetry and shows the defamiliarization of poetry, and acquires a sudden resonance of enlightenment in defamiliarization. In her case, poetry is the most everyday part, but yet it presents novelty in the everyday, touching the foci of the times, striking a delicate balance between light and darkness, between the collective and the individual, between life and allegory, between the individual and the individual.
After winning the award, Wang Xiaoni was interviewed by Red Star News, from a keen onlooker writer to a teacher who preached and taught, Wang Xiaoni shared her creative experience and real life insights.
Red Star News: How did you feel about winning the Caotang Poetry Award poet of the year award? Talk about your understanding of the word "Caotang".
Wang Xiaoni: I came to Chengdu in the 1980s and 1990s and went to Caotang respectively. According to records, the caotang of that year "did not exist" after Du Fu left, and what is now preserved is rebuilt on the old site.
In fact, even if it has been best preserved, we can expect that a "hut" cannot be preserved for too long. I prefer to imagine that there is a very simple hut there, and the magazine "Caotang" is a memorial to the ideal of "thousands of houses in Ande Guangsha, sheltering the world and enjoying the faces of the cold people". Nearly 1,300 years later, this poem is still somewhat "poetic" expression, and there are still quite a few people who do not have access to a piece of thatched eaves.
Red Star News: Your winning work is "Winter Pre-hidden More Treasures (Group Of Poems)", can you tell us about the background and insight of the creation of this group of works?
Wang Xiaoni: These are two groups of poems, with 7 newly organized poems and 5 poems from the past.
The poems of the past, from the late 1980s to the beginning of this century.
The newer poems are from recent years, with the latest being early 2018. Although they all belong to "to another world", they have been writing poems under this major topic for more than a decade, and each capital has a different background.
For example, the creation of "To the Security Guard Holding a Long Stick on the Subway" is that I once met a security guard on the subway, and in the last car, the security guard may be off work, looking very tired, and sleeping very deeply as soon as he sat down, and the stick in his hand was black and long, and he kept going up and down with the carriage. It was such a scene that contributed to the writing of this poem.
And "To the Snow Falling in the Sea" is a fictional scene. There is no snow in Shenzhen in the four seasons, but I have seen the black waves in the South China Sea when it encounters strong typhoons. I wondered what it would be like if snow fell at this time, and I followed my imagination to write "To the Snow Falling in the Sea."
"To the Glorious Poet Shao Chunguang" is a tribute to the poet Shao Chunguang. Shao Chunguang, a folk poet, an almost forgotten spontaneous maverick forerunner, died of illness in 2010.
Red Star News: You have won numerous poetry awards at home and abroad before, how do you view the relationship between poets and awards? How should poets face these awards?
Xiaoni Wang: It is a thing in life. There are many big and small things that surround us every day, and it is one of them that does not need to be particularly emphasized and cared for.
Any praise reward comes from the outside, while poetry can only come from itself, and there is no necessary correlation between these two things.
Red Star News: In addition to poetry, your works involve novels, essays, and essays, which theme is your most handy? Which genre do you find most difficult? Does poetry have the greatest weight in this?
Wang Xiaoni: Which form has a more suitable content, and what form to write is more appropriate, is determined by the content, or it is a natural choice. Each form has its own specific strengths, limitations, or characteristics, or difficulties.
Red Star News: Talk about what you've been writing lately, your focus, and the work you're planning to publish?
Wang Xiaoni: Writing a story from 1967, a long novel. Very slow, not in a hurry to write.
There are several sets of short poems, which have not yet been completed, and they are slowly changed, and they are not in a hurry.
There are also columns for Tencent, such as the recent record of the green car on the Chengkun Railway passing through Daliangshan at the end of March. Currently, there are no clear publishing plans.
Red Star News: In your eyes, what qualities does a good poet need to have?
Xiaoni Wang: Sharp and determined. Don't limit yourself. Eclectic.
Red Star News: A poet often encounters problems such as running out of inspiration and not being able to break through himself in his creation, what do you think is the most common problem? What's the hardest thing to overcome?
Wang Xiaoni: I am a rabbit-like, and I don't write when I feel wrong. No one says that we must write, as if we came into this world to write, not so, there are all kinds of pleasures in life, not to write.
The initial feeling and the most vivid discovery are very important, it is the original start, with it as a guarantee, there may be a continuous unfolding.
Red Star News: Did you know that the most popular of your works on the book review website is "Lesson Notes"? What do you think is the reason for this?
Wang Xiaoni: Actually, the two "Lesson Notes" are not all I wrote about my daily life.
It attracts attention because it records the seemingly ordinary and trivial people and things around us. These records from 2006 to 2012 may take on a different meaning in the future, because they are original records that are close to the original reality.
I have always paid attention to reality in my own way and perspective, but "Lesson Notes" has become a book, in addition to it, since 2015, dozens of columns written to Tencent have also been a continuation of similar recording styles.
Red Star News: In the future, will you still write "Lesson 3" and write about the story and experience of the class?
Wang Xiaoni: I don't plan at the moment, because I don't have classes anymore. At the moment I don't know if there will be "Lesson Note 3".
Red Star News: After teaching at Hainan University for all these years, what do you think is the most important thing to communicate with students? How do you see the connection between the identity of the teacher who preaches and solves problems and writing?
Wang Xiaoni: The most important thing in communicating with students is equality and listening, not preaching from above. My understanding of this is gradual, from the beginning of "Lesson Notes" to "Lesson Notes 2", I can see my correction and change of the role of teachers.
Since in that position, of course, I must first be a responsible teacher, and writing, after it, is another thing, which is my personal recollection and precipitation.
I don't write anything during the semester when I'm in class, and I write almost nothing except take notes every day. After the end of the semester, I started writing.
I first started my class in 2005, and "Lesson Notes" started in 2006 and didn't write it in 2005, because I didn't think about writing about the class experience at that time. If you compare the beginning of "Lesson Notes" with the end of "Lesson Notes 2", the reader will find that they are very different, like two different people. Except for the span of seven years, the angle of description, style, style, and focus are all different, and the writing of these two books is a process of gradual and conscious change from complete unconsciousness.
Red Star News: You don't like to be concerned, so you have been away from the hustle and bustle, not to integrate into any factions and circles, and do not pay much attention to various poetry activities, but are more willing to raise flowers and vegetables at home, read and write, what kind of nourishment does such a personality and lifestyle bring to your writing, and do you feel that you should pay more attention to and go deep into the opportunity of society to get more nutrients?
Wang Xiaoni: Personality is different, I don't like people who are buzzing, I can't say what nourishment. However, this does not prevent me from paying attention to social reality, and everyone has different entry points for paying attention to reality.
For example, my Weibo, which was originally used to facilitate after-class communication with classmates, later, when I stopped teaching, I often updated it, which can reflect my usual concerns.
I understand that writing poetry is a very personal thing, but the complexity and openness it contains, the connection between it and the reality of our existence, is not too little but too heavy and too much.
Red Star News reporter Chen Mou Photojournalist Tao Ke
Edited by Yang Yutong