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Three Events, Three Weeks

In March 2019, Spittoon organised and facilitated three events for the Bookworm Literary Festival in Beijing — one of the city’s most respected annual literary programmes. The events took place across three consecutive weekends and represented some of the most ambitious programming Spittoon had undertaken to that point.

Writing in Contemporary China — Sunday 17th March

Spittoon Literary Magazine presented a reading and discussion of literature and writing in contemporary China, featuring two young Chinese writers — fiction writer Suo Er and poet Ye Mei — alongside their English-language translators. Readings of Chinese poetry and fiction in the original Chinese and in English translation were followed by a discussion about contemporary Chinese literature and the translation process, moderated by Magazine Editor-in-Chief Simon Shieh.

Suo Er, born in 1992 in Guangdong, holds a Master’s in Comparative Literature from Wuhan University. His work has appeared in Zhong Mountain, Yangtze River Literature, and Spittoon Literary Magazine. He received first place in the first Ya Salon Short Story Awards and was awarded the 43rd Hong Kong Youth Literature Award. Ye Mei, a poet born in the 1980s, won the fourth Weiming Poetry Prize and has published two collections of poetry.

Spittunes: A Poetry and Music Collaboration — Saturday 23rd March

Presented by Spittoon founder Matthew Byrne, the Bookworm Spittunes event paired four musical acts with four poets for specially created collaborative performances. The line-up ranged from prog-rock and jazzy-Latin soundtracking to ambient sound manipulation and classical guitar, with each musician performing a collaboration song worked on together with their poet.

The match-ups were: Bond and Byrne with Jaime Santirso, Liane Halton with Anthony Tao, Wen Liang with Lethokuhle Msimang, and Solent with Jady Liu. Video projection by Nina Dillenz.

Jaime Santirso, born in Gijón in 1990, published his debut collection Encuentro in 2018 and has reported on international politics for RNE, Spanish national radio. Lethokuhle Msimang is a South African poet born in Durban, whose work has appeared in New Coin Poetry, Hanging Loose, and The Paris/Atlantic. Anthony Tao is a writer and editor whose poetry has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Borderlands, The Cortland Review, and other publications.

The Art of Creating a Collective — Saturday 30th March

The final event brought together representatives from four Beijing arts collectives — Spittoon, LoReLi, Hole In The Wall, and Beijing Writers Network — to discuss the organic growth of creative communities in Beijing. Each collective had formed its own distinct identity over years of activity in the city, and the panel explored the infrastructure, complexity, and excitement of building something cultural in Beijing and China more broadly.

Matthew Byrne represented Spittoon, discussing the collective’s growth from a single poetry night in 2015 into a multi-city literary organisation. Amy Daml, co-founder of Loreli, brought seven years of Beijing experience to the discussion. Shuilam Wong runs Hole In The Wall, a collective documenting underground culture through illustrations, zines, and collaborative events. David Huntington hosts the Beijing Writers Network. The panel was moderated by AFP journalist Poornima Weerasekara.

Originally published March 2019 on the Spittoon WeChat channel.