Xu Lizhi

Xu Lizhi (, 1990 – 1 October 2014) was a Chinese poet and factory worker. Xu worked for Foxconn and attracted media attention after his suicide, after which his friends published his collection of poems.

His poetry is featured in Chuang 1 ("Dead Generations"), a collection of essays published by AK Press and authored by Chinese Communists who have become disillusioned in or disappointed with the results produced by the Chinese Communist Party.

Life Early life Xu Lizhi was born in a farmer's family on 18 July 1990 in Jieyang. He was the youngest of the three sons. Xu's mother was a Christian who used to relate biblical stories to Xu. Xu Lizhi showed great interest in reading books in his childhood, especially literature, though he did not have a lot of access to books. a place that was experiencing rapid industrialization. Ten hours after his death, on 1 October 2014, China's National Day, Xu's Weibo account released a new blog that was written in advance. and Time reported Xu's death. On September 30, 2018, four years after Xu's death, the journal "Worker Poets" opened up a special that published selected poems by 26 different poets that mourn Xu Lizhi.

Family Xu never let his family know about his poems, so it was only after his death that his brother knew of his poems. According to Xu's brother, "Now every time I try to read his poems, I am not able to read them, because my heart aches so much".

Fellow worker Xu Lizhi's fellow worker Zhou Qizao mourned Xu Lizhi with the poem Upon Hearing the News of Xu Lizhi's Suicide.

Legacy Left-wing website libcom.org translated several of Xu's poems and Xu's obituary into English.

Gothic metal singer-songwriter Chelsea Wolfe's fourth studio album Abyss features a song titled "Iron Moon", inspired by Xu's writings and suicide. It is titled after his work "I Swallowed a Moon made of Iron".

Writer and director Qin Xiaoyu complied Xu's work into the book A New Day, named after Xu's last words. Qin also made a documentary about Xu's life and work entitled The Verse of Us, the English version of which is named The Iron Moon, after Xu's work "I Swallow a Moon made of Iron". This documentary was named the year's best documentary in the Guanzhou International Documentary Festival in 2015. A multi-author Chinese poetry anthology named after Xu's work "I Swallow a Moon made of Iron", and containing some of his poetry, compiled by Qin Xiaoyu, was translated into English as Iron Moon: An Anthology of Chinese Migrant Worker Poetry by Eleanor Goodman and was published in 2017.

Antifascist black metal project Cuscuta used four of Xu's poems as lyrics for their 2015 album Fodder for the Callous.

References and notes