Unofficial Poetry from China
Publishing outside the System in Post-Mao China
SINOL UNPO 2 3 1979
Unofficial Poetry from China
Unofficial or “underground” poetry publications—especially journals, but also one-off multiple-author anthologies and individual collections—play an important role in contemporary Chinese culture. They are comparable to Soviet-Russian samizdat publications, and to the “little magazines” often associated with early modernism in the West. Leiden University Libraries holds an internationally unique collection of these publications. The collection’s shelfmark is “UNPO.”
This unofficial poetry is hugely influential but difficult to access. To address this paradox and advance research, teaching, and use by the general reader, Leiden University Libraries has digitized large parts of the collection and made this material freely accessible online.
The collection shows how unofficial poetry accommodates various marginalized groups in China, including “avant-garde” poets, precarious workers, and members of the queer community. Some of the titles also contain other genres than poetry. The collection also contains some early unofficial publications from the high-socialist period.
The print collection was built by Maghiel van Crevel during regular fieldwork trips since the 1990s and continues to grow. The help of Chinese poets and scholars has been invaluable throughout. The digitization project is non-commercial and not for profit. It hinges on community involvement and was greatly helped by generous financial support from Freerk Heule and by collaboration with the Fudan University Library.
To facilitate research, Leiden University Libraries has created a satellite collection of material documenting unofficial poetry. This collection’s shelfmark is UNPOD.
For some quick tips on using the collection, watch this video. For a list of all titles that are available online, click here and sort by title.
The year of publication for each item should be accurate in most cases, but publication dates at the level of month and day are approximations at best, made in order to satisfy the system’s input requirements.
The material in this collection is in copyright. If you hold the rights to materials in our digitized collections that are unattributed, please let us know. Click on this link for our Notice and Takedown Policy.