Leiden University Libraries holds an internationally unique collection of unofficial poetry from China. Produced outside the System over the last fifty years or so, this poetry is hugely influential yet hard to find beyond the informal networks through which it travels. To address this paradox, the print collection has been flanked by a digital collection since 2019. This year’s upgrade will make some 25,000 pages of new material freely accessible online and take the digital collection to about 100,000 pages in all: journals, single-author books, and multiple-author anthologies.

To celebrate the DIY tradition of unofficial poetry, Leiden University Libraries will host a symposium in the Vossius room on Friday 22 November from 15.15 to 17.00 CET, followed by drinks.

The symposium is open to all. If you would like to attend, please register via the button below before 20 November. The event will also be livestreamed. Please register to receive a link to the livestream by email. The livestream will become available via the button below once registrations have closed.

Register

Speakers

Marc Gilbert (Leiden University Libraries):

Unofficial Poetry Publications from China: Where Every Word Counts.

Zhou Zan (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences):

Who Made and Makes the Space for Unofficial Poetry?

Nanne Timmer (Leiden University):

Unexpected Cuban-Chinese Connections: Poetic Contagions and Samizdat Writing.

Bao Hongwei (University of Nottingham):

Queer Poetic Voices in Unofficial Journals.

Four speakers who combine a love of (writing) poetry with other identities will offer personal reflections to “talk back” to the collection, with no holds barred and plenty of room for Q&A: curator of the special collections Marc Gilbert, scholar of Chinese literature Zhou Zan, scholar of Cuban literature Nanne Timmer, and queer studies scholar Bao Hongwei (see above for their affiliations and the titles of their talks). Zhou Zan is also the editor of the unofficial women’s poetry journal Wings and of an affiliated women’s poetry book series that will hopefully become part of the digital collection in the near future. She will visit from Beijing for the occasion and speak from firsthand experience inside the Chinese poetry scene. Maghiel van Crevel, who built the print collection and initiated its digitization, will MC.

Cover of the brochure printed for the symposium

Poetry as a Social Practice

These moments in Chinese poetry share a considered decision to stand outside the System. They do so as part of a cultural tradition that is akin to anti-establishment and extra-establishment literatures in other places. Examples include samizdat writing in the Soviet Union, poetry workshops for emancipating vulnerable communities in the contemporary US, all manner of worker poetry initiatives in countless places around the world, and so on. All this flows from the power of poetry as a social practice, in China as elsewhere, from antiquity to the present day.

Use and support

The Leiden University Libraries print and digital collections of unofficial poetry from China are used by general readers, students, researchers, and translators around the world. Their interest in this precious material shows the need to safeguard it and make it widely accessible. Guidance and support from poets and editors in the source community have been crucial to building the print and digital collections. Financial support from Dr. Freerk Heule and collaboration with the Fudan University library in Shanghai have enabled the digitization project to truly take off.

Learn more about the collection and symposium

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