Kuang Yun-loong 管運龍
Taiwanese poet Kuang Yun-loong, who rose to prominence under his pen name Guan Guan, was born in Shandong Province, Republic of China in 1929. Described as kind and approachable, even at old age the poet was known to be “young at heart”, according to Professor Chen Fang-ming of National Chengchi University. During his early years, he worked as a farmer in his hometown of Longfeng. Kuang Yun-loong moved to Taiwan in 1949 after being forced to join the army, working as an engineer before becoming a reporter and then host for a military broadcasting company. His transition into writing as a career would come in the 1960s, working as a part time actor in film, television and theatre whilst also as a full-time writer.
Whilst celebrated primarily as a poet, Kuang did find success in Taiwan’s film industry too. Wang Jujin’s film, “The Legend of the Six Dynasty” saw one of his first major acting roles, with the film winning Best Director and Best Original Score at Taiwan’s answer to the Oscars, the Golden Horse Awards. He starred in other films such as “The Lotus Society” and “Super Citizen”, along with TV dramas such as “Applause” – in total appearing in over thirty film and television series.
However, Kuang’s poetry would be his favourite activity. He was a long-time member of the Epoch Poetry Club, which was founded in 1954 by poets Zhang Mo and Luo Fu, who also served in the military. The members of the poetry club often ignored the government’s calls for patriotic anti-communist poetry, experimenting with modernist themes – it was such experimentation that often allowed them to hide critiques of the government through their avant-garde writing styles. Kuang’s poetry itself included a disregard for sentence divisions, and the use of the Shandong dialect. In the 1970s, he attended the International Writing Workshop at the University of Iowa. Across his entire career, he won several awards for poetry, including Best New Poet from the Modern Literature and Art Association Hong Kong and a Chinese Modern Poetry award. His notable works include every volumes of selected poems and “The face of desertedness” (荒蕪之臉).
More recently, Kuang continued to be involved in poetry and drawing, holding several exhibitions at various institutions and running lectures in conjunction with the National Museum of Taiwan Literature. In mid-2021, it was announced that at the age of 92 years old, the great poet had been laid to rest, with the Ministry of Culture, Taiwan touching on his long career and respected position within the history of poetry in Taiwan.
