MCLC: Yang Mu wins Newman Prize 2012

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Gries, Peter H. <gries at ou.edu>
Subject: Yang Mu wins Newman Prize 2012
****************************************************

YANG MU WINS 2013 NEWMAN PRIZE FOR CHINESE LITERATURE
<http://www.ou.edu/uschina/newman/winners.html>

楊牧荣获2031年美国纽曼华语文学奖

 
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: OU Inst. US-China Issues
<http://www.ou.edu/uschina/newman/charter.html>, 405/325-3580
 

NORMAN, OK - The Taiwanese poet Yang Mu (楊牧) has been chosen by an
international jury as the winner of the third Newman Prize for Chinese
Literature <http://www.ou.edu/uschina/newman/home.html>. Sponsored by the
University of Oklahoma’s Institute for U.S.-China Issues, Newman Prize is
awarded biennially in recognition of outstanding achievement in prose or
poetry that best captures the human condition, and is conferred solely on
the basis of literary merit. Any living author writing in Chinese is
eligible. A jury of five distinguished literary experts nominated the five
candidates last summer and selected the winner in a transparent voting
process on 5 October 2012.

 
Mr. Yang Mu will receive USD 10,000, and a commemorative plaque and
medallion at an award ceremony and academic symposium at the University of
Oklahoma on March 8, 2013. The event will be hosted by Peter Hays Gries,
director of the Institute for US-China Issues
<http://www.ou.edu/uschina/newman/home.html>, which seeks to advance
mutual trust in US-China relations.

 
“The five jurists nominated five exceptionally talented poets,” said
director Gries. “So they had a very difficult choice. It is a credit to
Yang Mu’s extraordinary literary achievement that he emerged the winner
after four rounds of positive elimination voting.”

 
The Newman Prize honors Harold J. and Ruth Newman, whose generous
endowment of a chair at the University of Oklahoma enabled the creation of
the OU Institute for US-China Issues. The University of Oklahoma
<http://www.ou.edu/content/web.html> is also home to Chinese Literature
Today, World Literature Today <http://www.worldliteraturetoday.com/>, and
the Neustadt International Prize for Literature
<http://www.worldliteraturetoday.com/neustadt-prize>. A special section of
Chinese Literature Today will be dedicated to Yang Mu’s work in summer
2013.

 
The five nominated poets under consideration were: Yang Mu (楊牧), Hsia Yu (
夏
宇), Yang Lian (杨炼), Zhai Yongming (翟永明), and Ouyang Jianghe (欧阳江
河). The 
third Newman Prize jury consisted of five internationally recognized
jurors based in the U.S., U.K., Mainland China, and Germany. It was
coordinated by Jonathan Stalling (University of Oklahoma). The jurors were
(in alphabetical order): Jennifer Feeley (University of Iowa), Michel
Hockx (SOAS, University of London),  Wolfgang Kubin (University of Bonn),
Michelle Yeh (University of California, Davis), and Zhang Qinghua (Beijing
Normal University).
 
The list of nominees was filled with luminaries of the mainland Chinese
and Taiwanese literary scenes. Stylistically and formally, each poet
displays a high level of originality, ranging from dense lyricism to
colloquial narratives, from variations on the sonnet to poetic cycles,
from philosophical musings to deconstructive energy. Thematically, the
nominees represent remarkable breadth and depth. The judges considered the
vision of poetry as beauty and truth; radical challenges to the limit of
signification; intricate relations between language and exile; expressions
of the female psyche; and critical reflections on a fast-changing China.

 
The diversity and strength of the nominations posed a great challenge for
the jury. Yet Yang Mu emerged as the consensus winner after four rounds of
positive elimination voting. Born in 1940 in Hualian on the east coast of
Taiwan, Yang Mu has produced an extraordinary corpus of poetry and prose
over the past five decades. After graduating from college, he attended the
University of Iowa, where he received an MFA. He went on to earn a PhD in
comparative literature from the University of California at Berkeley. He
has taught at the University of Washington in Seattle for many years, and
as a visiting professor at Princeton and National Taiwan University, among
others. He has also served as the dean of humanities at National Dong Hwa
University in his hometown Hualian, and as the founding director of the
Institute of Literature and Philosophy at Academia Sinica, Taiwan. Yang Mu
started writing poetry in 1956 and has published 14 original books of
poetry to date, most of which are gathered in the three volume Collected
Works of Yang Mu. 

 
“Yang Mu,” Michelle Yeh comments, “is an innovator, a supreme craftsman.
His deep engagement in world literature, cultures, and history has given
his work a versatility and profundity that is unparalleled among Chinese
poets today, perhaps even in the entire history of modern Chinese poetry.
He has created a language that is densely lyrical and charged with a
diction that runs the spectrum from the colloquial to the archaic, a
syntax that is supple and complex, and a tone that ranges from playfulness
to passion, and to despair. He moves easily from the world of tangibles to
the world of abstraction, with images rich and precise. His poetic world
is cosmopolitan and global on the one hand, and decidedly native and local
on the other. Some of his most powerful poems reveal an unwavering love
for and identity with Taiwan. Yang Mu has inspired several generations of
poets in the Chinese-speaking world. He has produced a body of work
brilliant and impressive in its range: reticent, controlled, yet musical,
adventuresome, and linguistically surprising line-by-line. The reader
thinks with him, inside the poem and inside his mind and emotions, and
emerges more aware of the world and what it means to be human.”

 
Mainland Chinese novelists Mo Yan (莫言) and Han Shaogong (韩少功) won the
2009 
and 2011 Newman Prizes for Chinese Literature respectively.

 
For more information, please visit the Newman Prize homepage
<http://www.ou.edu/uschina/newman/home.html>. You can also contact:

- Peter Gries <mailto:gries at ou.edu>, The University of Oklahoma,
405/325-1962 (US Central Time).
- Michelle Yeh <mailto:mmyeh at ucdavis.edu>, University of California at
Davis, 530/758-0151 (US Pacific Time).

 
Harold J. & Ruth Newman Chair & Director,
Institute for U.S.-China Issues
Professor, Department of Internationaal and Area Studies
The University of Oklahoma
729 Elm Ave.; Hester Hall, Room 120
Norman, Oklahoma, 73019-2105

www.ou.edu/uschina <http://www.ou.edu/uschina>PHONE: 405/325-1962; FAX:
405/325-7738
 
Never forget: The mission of the University of Oklahoma is to provide the
best possible educational experience for our students through excellence
in teaching, research and creative activity, and service to the state and
society.