Saturday 4 October 2008 A new collection of poems, ’Tibet’s True
Heart’, by Tibet’s most well-known writer and commentator,
Woeser, is now available in English. The poems are published at
the time of the worst crackdown in Tibet for 50 years, when
hundreds of Tibetans have ’disappeared’ or been silenced
following a wave of protests against Chinese rule that swept the
plateau from March onwards. Despite living under almost constant
police surveillance in Beijing together with her husband,
Chinese writer Wang Lixiong, Woeser continues to be one of the
most eloquent and fiercest critics of Chinese oppression in
Tibet. The new collection of her poems, written over 20 years
and translated by A.E.Clark, reveal Woeser’s discovery of her
Tibetan Buddhist identity and her country’s past after an
upbringing in elite Party circles speaking Chinese. Her writings
are reflections on life, memory, loss and spiritual faith as
well as forbidden subjects such as political imprisonment and
injustice. Woeser’s latest poem, ’Fear