“COMPARED with poems by other female poets in China, hers stand out like a killer among groups of ladies,” Liu Nian, editor of the Chinese literary journal Poetry, said about Yu Xiuhua’s works.

    In her poem “Crossing Big China to Sleep With You,” Yu wrote, “Across China, all is happening: volcanoes are erupting, rivers are running dry. Political prisoners and the displaced were disregarded, elks and red-crowned cranes were shot to the ground. And I, I trespassed a hail of bullets to sleep with you, I pressed nights into a dawn to sleep with you, I gathered all I am to sleep with you.”

    Tagged as “the poetess with cerebral palsy (group of disorders that can involve brain and nervous system functions, such as movement, learning, hearing, seeing, and thinking)” and paradoxically as “China’s Emily Dickinson” in media reports, Yu’s work has recently gone viral on WeChat, China’s largest standalone messaging app.

    Her blog, previously with less than 200 followers, now has climbed to over 5,000 followers, with more than 400,000 hits.

    Her fans are not shy about expressing their love for her work.

    One left her a message: “Your poem moved me. It’s been a long while since I tasted my tears.” Another wrote, “Your poem made me realize that poetry is still alive.”

    Putting her feelings into words has always worked for Yu, but she does not intend to teach or preach.

    “When I’m not happy, I write it down, and the words are basically an expression of my mood at that particular moment. I do not write in order to show something,” said Yu in an inter view with People’s Daily Online.

    “I never think of what I should write about in poems or how to write them. When I’m worried about my life, I don’t have the luxury of caring about where my country is going, nor where human beings are heading. If I happen to be writing about these matters, it is because they touched me, warmed me or really made me sad or worried,” said Yu.

    Compared to her words that flow elegantly with no difficulty, Yu’s physical posture is nothing but smooth.

    Yu shakes her head when she talks, and her speech stutters sometimes. When she walks, she often stumbles as she moves across the room. When she types, she presses the keyboard arduously, solely with her left index finger.

    “You can talk to her about her physical condition, her husband and child, her attitude on love, and the domestic violence she’s suffered in her past,” Liu says. “There’s no barrier for you to reach down to her heart; you can easily walk in.”

    Journalists have flooded to interview her since she gained her fame, but some of her newly acquired fans worry that too much media attention will distract her from creating.

    “If you keep silent, even the howling sea will calm down,” Yu said in response.

    When she was told she was being compared to the famous American poet Emily Dickinson, she said she didn’t know who that was.

    In fact, the only thing the two have in common is probably their love of reading.

    Often she will pull a chair into the yard and read in the daylight or sit in her simply decorated bedroom by a plain wooden table illuminated by an energy-efficient bulb from the ceiling.

    She married a man 12 years her senior, and describes what has become an unhappy marriage as “youth rendered to an engagement of sin.”

    Her son, a freshman at a university in Wuhan, says his mother has a peaceful heart, yet she always prefers to show her tough side.

    Showing weakness to the world has never been on Yu’s list.

    In her words, “To make heard my physical disability is as redundant as for a tooth to say it aches.”

    (SD-Agencies)