The Wasteland: To the Poets Worn and Abandoned by Time

The playground is becoming dilapidated
Overgrown with weeds
Took away the wish
Only the footprints of departure remain
Who would know this place
Originally a garden
You picked a yellow flower for me
Say goodbye to each other
Island
(Each one walks into his own
Dusk)

Poet Mu Yan, who just won the first prize of the Huazong Literary Award for Malaysian Chinese New Poetry, looks out at the poets, writers, artists, photographers, and revolutionary fighters who have been consumed and abandoned by the times, and stands alone to pay tribute to creators such as Rilke, Paul Celan, Che Guevara, and Susan Sontag.

Comparing with the time and space background of his predecessors, the poet's creation awakens overlapping empathy, sharing the same loneliness in the generations of sound and light, and lingering in the wilderness.

Mu Yan

Born in Johor Bahru, Malaysia, he graduated from the Department of Chemical Engineering at National Taiwan University. He currently works in pharmaceutical manufacturing in Wuxi, Jiangsu.

A reclusive yet vibrant bard, he excels in short verse and can even master long poems spanning hundreds of lines. His poems often use imagery to weave the beauty of rhyme and tone, creating a comprehensible and modern classical aesthetic. He also writes short stories, essays, novels, and poetry criticism. His works include "Writing Poems in Secret," "I Have Recited You," "Wandering with Rilke's Portrait," and "The Dictation Poet," and have been selected for poetry and prose anthologies both domestically and internationally.

In 2019, he won the first prize for new poetry at the Malaysia Huazong Literary Award for his poem "My Mother Tongue is Poetry". He has also won the National Outstanding Young Poet Award, the First Malaysian Chinese Literature Award, and the Youchuan Short Poetry Award.