Interview with Yang Lian in Ghost Milk by Iain Sinclair

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.