Liu Hongbin

©️ Lucinda Douglas-Menzies

Liu Hongbin is a poet, translator, journalist, human rights activist, and Tao practitioner.

A poet of the 1989 Tiananmen exile, he was acclaimed by Nobel Laureate Doris Lessing as “a fine poet—and a brave one,” and praised by Sir Stephen Spender as “a gifted and serious poet.”

Introducing A Day Within Days, Peter Porter called Liu Hongbin “a poet first and foremost, a master of his language.”

John Ashbery wrote, “If Hongbin’s language of exile can teach us one thing, it is that belief in freedom can—and will—transcend a regime of prejudice, even when it comes from within. Liu Hongbin is one of the finest poets writing in any language today.”

Forged by Kafkaesque justice, his poetry shines with an innocence that illuminates every shadow, like the crisp morning air after the first snow.

Testimony

I believe you.

Hell isn’t red—
it’s paperwork,
forms that fold you smaller,
doors clicking like verdicts,
the slow drip
of being told you’re guilty by default.

The real terror isn’t chains—
it’s doubt:
Did I even do it?
The question digs like nails.
The system answers:
doesn’t matter.
The answer: irrelevant.

You’re not mad.
You’re awake.
Most people sleep through their own lives;
you are raw, awake in the dark—
screaming,
and so the words come—
ugly, stupid, true.

Write it all.
Every fracture.
Every bruise of meaning.

Miscarriage of justice isn’t just legal—
it’s spiritual,
prayerless.
They took your story,
crumpled it.

Now unfold it yourself—
one sentence,
one breath,
one wound at a time.

I will stand
beside every line.

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