I have been travelling, all over the world, many times.
It’s not that I am everywhere, but everywhere is inside of me. This is true of
Lea Valley. We base our individual discoveries on the idea that both the place
and we ourselves are new, or renewed by the dialogue between place and
ourselves. It is not a general Lea Valley, but my Lea Valley. Lea Valley is
very special and different from other places.
I myself am a valley, like my poem. Or like a river. The
movement goes down. Every poet is an archaeologist of now. The layers of this
time are within the moment of where we are. It’s not cancelled time, but all
the time brought into one moment. I feel Lea Valley is a wonderful chance for
me to see how deep the self, or selves, could be.
I did some research on the area. Lea Valley is part of
London today, but it was once the border of Saxon and Viking kingdoms. There
was a Roman camp in Springfield Park. An ice age made this landscape. All those
realities are part of myself. All those layers make a dialogue of my memories
including layers from other places. I write about other rivers: Hutuo, Hudson,
Parramatta. All those rivers I have been to before. They become part of Lea
Valley, within the riverbanks. Lea Valley is me. I am Lea Valley.
I don’t try to compare the Olympic experience in Beijing
directly with what is happening in Lea Valley. But it’s a general problem of
the world, the commercial use of landscape. I witnessed the destruction of
history in Beijing. History and classical chinese culture have been totally
covered over and destroyed by so-called globalization, by ugly buildings. That
is a new way to cut our memories, to root them out.
Lea Valley is being destroyed all the time. It is always
being destroyed: by old industries, football grounds. They transform
everything. The authorities have tried their best to convert the marshland, the
original view, to a more commercial use.
As poets, we know that we have become important. Only by
our deep experience, our studies, can we keep the soul of the landscape. We can
remember the original creative power we gain from the land. I am now a British
citizen, but, when my strangers eyes look on Lea Valley, I recognize how rich
are the links between the depths of the local and my experience of other
places. I deeply hope the London Olympics are not only for commercial gain, but
for the discovery of this other spirit. The invisible link between this land
and mine.
The key word, not only for the Lea Valley, but all other
matters, is awareness. Poetry is the best way to show understanding and
awareness. Lea Valley must be the base of spirit, not only a base of sport. The
government and the commercial bodies don’t know that vision or have that
understanding. They think of Lea Valley as a place of nothing. They don’t have
a vision of real development, the development of the mind. They only see
buildings. We, the poets, need to tell them, or at least write down, that
awareness is our poetry. I hope to suggest that Hackney does something based
around the fact that there are so many writers in Lea Valley. The council
should think about Lea Valley and literature. Festivals are the real Olympics,
the Olympics of the spirit.
When I walk in London, I love these so-called canals.
They’re beautiful. London is pretty low lying, a lot of marshland. Chelsea was originally
marshland. Now of course it has expensive buildings. Luckily, we have a small
piece of marshland left, in Hackney. When I walk through these marshes it is
hard to believe I am almost in the centre of London. It is both wild and alive.
It reminds me of the wild geese, crying as they cross the sky. In Chinese
characters, the flying shape is exactly the character for ‘human’. It is the
sign or symbol for ‘homesickness’.
In Lea Valley context, this homesickness is not only for
China, but for man. For the original life of the land. Those wild geese remind
me of this, otherwise I would be cut off. If we lose awareness, we can become
so poor, so boring.
Beijing has changed more in the last thirty years than in
the previous thousand. It’s a huge change. Remembering the Communist times, the
Cultural Revolution, when people were living in extremely poor conditions, I’m
not totally against that. You find that the classical will almost always be
destroyed. The serious culture, the intellectual culture, is very different
today. All those changes, including the introduction of a measure of democracy,
are important. I’m happy to see people talking about democracy and not just
mouthing off hollow slogans.
For the last fifty years, or even more, what happened in
China was a kind of disaster. Based on unawareness. Based on huge emotion: all
the way back to the opium war, Japanese War, Civil War. The Chinese people have
not undertaken a clear introspection. They have not built up a good
understanding of their own cultural traditions. Therefore, they don’t know what
were the good things in that tradition. For quite a long time they have tried
to abandon everything. But no one can abandon a tradition, since the language
is inside the people. Tradition controlled everyone. Secretly, subconsciously,
we were unaware. The young men, idealists, found themselves joining the power
game and ending up as bigger or smaller dictators.
London has always been a base for exchange between the
very high culture of China and England. You tell me that Arthur Waley loved the
River Lea? Lea Valley has a link with classical Chinese Landscape. The water,
the waves: it has a classical Chinese Melancholy beauty. I’m not totally
surprise by Waley’s love for this place. The moon in the river. Huge clouds.
The skies are so dramatic.
So, to come back to where we start: human beings are
always inspired by nature and the discovery of nature in themselves. You have a
link between man and his discovery of nature and roots in locality. Then you
find you have a link with all the great classical poets in all language:
Goethe, Homer, Dante, Li Po, Du Fu. Everyone. This is the key: we translate
everyone into ourselves. If we think of the new Olympic structures in China the
Games were run as a dictatorship toy. As part of the propaganda of Communism.
The apparent links between the two Olympics are so shameful. It would be
shameful for London to think that the only reason that the Olympics would be
done for commercial reasons.
The only deep energy that happens inside these epochal
cultural transformations, in China and in Britain too, is the poetry or the
eyes of poetry. Then we could say, there is a link, and a very great link.
The landscape is inspiration, I think. The external
landscape is an inspiration in front of our eyes. But, finally, poetry builds
up the inner landscape, inside our hearts and minds. Inner knowledge also includes
all the spiritual understanding in the idea of forms and in the discovery of
landscape. This is what brought the human soul to connect with the Olympics in
Greece. The transformation of external landscape into inner landscape, that is
the power of spirit. I don’t know how, but if somebody can see this point, then
anything is possible.
We must do our own projects, not only for an audience but
for ourselves: deep discoveries, between poets, and therefore between two
languages, two cultures. Image by image, sentence by sentence, inside of the
form. We don’t understand the language of the other – but our understanding
through poetry, like bolts of lightning, leads us forward. We see how language
moves, and that it is such a beautiful experience. Both languages are so
interesting.
The deep dialogue between Chinese and English is like a
dialogue between time and space. The Chinese language has been transformed from
3,000 years ago until today. And the transformation, good and bad, is proved by
thousands of great masterpieces. There must be something unique inside that
language.
The English language is the language which covers the
greatest space in the world. Very different colours to the same language. How
to judge the poetry? This was the real meeting point between China and England.
Real discussions about what is the meaning of global, what is the meaning of a
cultural exchange today. I come back to the idea of the international within
the local. That has to be the dialogue, between the depth of the different
roots. We can have a real internationalism, not just a commercial level of
internationalism, causing us to fall into emptiness. Which would be a great
pity and a disaster.
