Chinese Name: 利玉芳

Born: January 22, 1952

Birthplace: Pingtung County (Southern Taiwan)

Born in Pingtung’s Liudui Hakka settlement, Li Yu-fang began to pen down the bits and pieces of her life ever since she started schooling at Neipu Junior High. She loved to write down her thoughts on her exercise book and diaries, and even submitted her writings to magazines. Though she did not write about important issues back then, she nevertheless felt a sense of joy and accomplishment whenever she saw her works published, and this planted a seed in her heart which grew to become a passion towards literature.

She moved to a Minnan village in Tainan when she got married to live with her husband, and those around her conversed using the Hoklo language – to Li, who was accustomed to ruminating in the Hakka language, it took quite a while for her to adjust and get comfortable to the surroundings that she would go on to spend a lifetime around. Perhaps it was due to such an experience that caused Li to write modern poetry that straddled Mandarin, Hoklo, and Hakka languages; a rarity in poetics. Each language carried its own unique line of thought and cultural background, but Li’s poetry mainly centered around a sense of care towards life, an analysis of human nature, and a questioning of the meaning of existence.

From the hustle and bustle of life, to pastoral impressions, travel experiences, and musings about society and history, Li created poetry from a feminine emotional basis and perspective. Her art was a reexamination of herself vis-à-vis the world. Li’s earlier works touched on the female body and bodily desires; her poetry was bold, her lines fresh and broke free from hackneyed styles.

Li is not only a member of the Taiwan Modern Poet Association and the “Literary Taiwan (文學台灣)” journal, she also took part in a gathering of the Li Poetry Society (笠詩社) – a pioneer of all poetry associations in Taiwan – and was active in events that revolved around the literary scene in Taiwan. She organized exchanges with poets from all over the world, and attended international poetry events in South Korea, Japan, Mongolia, Chile, Peru, and so forth. With the hope that Taiwan’s poetry could step onto the international stage, Li would capitalize on every opportunity to recite poetry in her native tongue, using Hakka to deliver her works. Even though foreign poets could not understand her, they could nevertheless feel the unique expression, mood, and emotion in the poems.

Though poems are static portrayals of words, in recent years, Li discovered that poetry could be depicted in different fashions, such as being recomposed into a dance and using body language to convey the poem. By adding music, costumes, lighting, together with the stage and an audience, a poem’s visual, auditory, and sensory aspects could all be brought to life. A poem could also be the lyrics of a song, creating a dialogue and exchange between poem and song. With more and more avenues for a poet to explore, new perspectives allow for much of what was previously overlooked or ignored to become presented in poetry.

(Translator: James Loo

In collaboration with Fu Jen Catholic University, Department of English)