Interview with Ivan Stacy conducted by Abigail Weathers. Originally published in The Beijinger.
The First Workshop
Monday 26th April 2021 saw the first dedicated Spittoon U event — a poetry workshop at Café Zarah attended by a combination of university students and members of Spittoon’s regular Poetry Workshop. Advice and discussion of themes and form came thick and fast. Students commented afterwards that they enjoyed the relaxed atmosphere and the encouraging, constructive feedback from other participants.
What is Spittoon U?
In the short space of six years, the Spittoon Collective had grown from small poetry nights in Beijing’s hutongs into a truly international organisation with locations across China, Europe, and the United States. Spittoon U is its newest project — designed to forge connections with universities and university students in Beijing. At its helm: Ivan Stacy, literature lecturer at Beijing Normal University.
Interview with Ivan Stacy
On his background: “I’m from Northumberland, in the northeast of England. I studied English Literature at the University of East Anglia for my bachelors and masters, then did my doctorate in Newcastle, which I got in early 2013. I mainly research contemporary literature around the theme of complicity. Being in China and reading fiction is one way of at least starting to understand the place — I’m trying to broaden my horizons in terms of what I’m reading.”
On how Spittoon U came about: “Initially it was Daniel Vuillermin who came to me with the idea, and I think it was something Matt Byrne — founder of Spittoon — had come up with as well. Daniel knew I was teaching at a university and therefore in a good place to involve students. We’ve designed a semi-structured course to take students through various Spittoon events, get them to workshop their writing, and get them to actually be writing their own stuff and contributing and becoming involved that way.”
On the challenge: “The COVID pandemic has constrained people’s movements and students are busy, but I think it’s healthy for them to get off campus and mix with non-students. I’d prefer to keep it at regular Spittoon venues rather than on campus — otherwise it becomes just another on-campus activity.”
On the vision: “Going forward, I hope students will really be part of Spittoon rather than occasionally just coming along. I hope it will reach the point where they’re taking the initiative and starting to organise and initiate things themselves. One of the great things about the organisation is it’s very fluid — it would be great if students could have the confidence to do that.”
Ivan’s Book
Ivan’s academic book The Complicit Text: Failures of Witnessing in Postwar Fiction was published by Lexington Books in 2021. It examines complicity across six writers — Albert Camus, Milan Kundera, Kazuo Ishiguro, W. G. Sebald, Thomas Pynchon, and Margaret Atwood — exploring how literature narrates from positions of peripheral involvement rather than direct victimhood or perpetration. Available on Amazon Kindle and via university libraries.
Interview by Abigail Weathers. Originally published in The Beijinger and on the Spittoon WeChat channel, 2021.
Matthew Byrne | Writer, Founder, Digital Marketer 
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