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* 23.05.1956, Sichuan, China
lebt in: Sichuan, China
SUN Wenbo (1956-), born in Sichuan, southwest China, spent his childhood in the countryside and went to school in Chengdu city. He served in the army for a few years before working in factories, and became a literary editor in the mid 80s after he published poems while working as a blue collar worker. He gained recognition first in Sichuan, then became prominent nationwide in the mid 90s when he joined his friends Zhang Shuguang and Xiao Kaiyu in editing the poetry journal “The Nineties” that promoted “narrative writing”. He was invited to the Rotterdam International Festival in 1998.
SUN Wenbo is a prolific writer with numerous collections published and has also served as editor of several journals such as Poetry Review and Contemporary Poetry. He is outspoken on debates and issues regarding Chinese contemporary poetry and has criticized the poetry in the 70s as nonsense, chaos, no logic, no theory, non-poetry but slogans. He rejects the fragmented phrases of lyrical nature and unrelated images in a poem, and promotes a new prosody similar to that of the Song Dynasty with Opening, Development, Change, and Revelation. To him, every single step is important in building a poem. As chief editor of an independent poetry journal outside academia, he is quiet influential on some young poets in China today.