NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW ON-LINE

'Otherland' is what the editor calls Australia; and the greater half of this book, upside down, or vice versa, is in Chinese, even the adverts. The other-way-up English has been put together by Ouyang Yu, and is a progression in his 'labour of love', which has up to now, apparently, been in Chinese characters only.

Thus, this being #6, is the English reader thrown straight into the deep end with an interview between Ouyang Yu and Zhong Dao - all reference points unknown, mention of underground Chinese poetry mags, the poets themselves... and one flounders. But one picks up clues... Zhong Dao seems to be promoting a new, for China, humanist/realist poetry. Although this starting point is possibly not that different from most mainstream poetry being written here in the West, the claim is made that the newer poets are trying to break free of the "university campus" or academic way of writing. (Oddly, here in the West, the academic way of writing is that which now calls itself 'experimental'. Thus has the anti-establishment vocabulary here been hijacked by the establishment. Confused? Read on.)

Mirror images aside, the production of poetry mags, rest assured, is as unsupported and unprofitable in China and Australia as it is here; as is the difficulty in pushing forward a new kind of poetry to a fundamentally conservative readership - poets.

As to the contents - A poetic tour de force of nine European cities by Hong Ying (translated by Mabel Lee) are best read together than in extracts - the work having created its own history and inscapes.

Regards the rest of the poems there is a variety of styles and subjects, from the anguished off-beat personal to the didactically surreal to the wryly observed. For reasons of carpal tunnel syndrome I have selected the two shortest as examples here.

	SUNDAY AFTERNOON

	I wring the past 
	out of the laundry
	until my palms hurt
	from twisting

	The clothesline waits
	to take the load
	of each article

	I hang 
	with care

	knowing the dry
	stiff future
	will come
                              
	JILL CHAN (Australia)

	THE BEHAVIOUR

	I was looking down from the verandah
	as someone was looking up
	we had a look at each other
	and we each drew our head back
                
	YU NU (China) transl. OUYANG YU

OTHERLAND must be required reading, I should think - to see how it's done - for all aspiring poets in the Chinese diaspora, also for those beyond seeking insights into other lives.