Grass Roots

Xiang Yang's poetry stands as elegant testimony to the Taiwan experience. From start to finish, the collection is an articulation of Taiwan's identity imbued with salient cultural details. The range and variety of his seven books of poetry include the development of a new formalism, narrative verse forms, and a strong engagement with Taiwanese dialect poetry. Since the publication of his cycle The Four Seasons (1986) he has written little, publishing but a single collection titled Chaos in 2005. In the intervening years, he has earned a PhD in journalism and moved from journalism to academia, devoting himself primarily to teaching. Apart from writing and his academic life, Xiang Yang is an established woodblock artist.