Xu Zhimo in Cambridge – Between the Ears: Saying Goodbye Again and Again

A very urgent post as this radio documentary on the Cambridge days of China’s great modern poet Xu Zhimo is only up on the BBC site for one more day. Cambridge was of course vital to Xu’s work, it was where he discovered the Romantic poets such as Keats and Shelley, the French and the Symbolists – he translated much of it while they inspired his own Chinese language poetry and work as a founder of the Crescent Moon Society.

Click here to listen – blurb below as ever – sorry for late notice!

“Quietly I leave, as quietly as I came here.”

Each year thousands of Chinese tourists visit Cambridge, not to see the usual sites, but to pay homage to a poem they all had to learn by heart in school – Xu Zhimo’s ‘Saying Goodbye to Cambridge Again’. Few non-Chinese speakers will have heard of it.

“Saying Goodbye again and again” takes a sonic journey along the River Cam capturing the voices of teachers, students, tourists, punt chauffeurs, a tour guide, a translator and experts on early 20th century Chinese poetry. Also visiting Cambridge are two poets from two very different backgrounds – Sean Street and Xin Zeng – who muse on the life of Xu Zhimo and explore the hidden depths of a poem which used ideas from the English romantics to help break the strict rules of classical Chinese poetry.