Poet Yu Kwang-chung dies in Taiwan aged 89
Celebrated poet Yu Kwang-chung died in the southwestern Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung on Thursday morning. He was 89.
Yu died in hospital from a pulmonary infection after a stroke, Taiwanese news site ETtoday reported.
Yu’s daughter said the family was saddened by its loss, United Daily News reported.
Born in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, in 1928, Yu fled to Taiwan via Hong Kong in 1950 and graduated from National Taiwan University in 1952, publishing his first collection of poems that year.
One of his best known works, Nostalgia, expresses his longing for the mainland.
Yu taught at various universities in Taiwan, Hong Kong and the United States, and was a frequent guest lecturer on the mainland.
A reader at the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Chinese language and literature department between 1974 and 1985, Yu was “a writer of great influence, especially resourceful in poetry and prose”, according to his profile on the university’s website.
“His poetry crystallises his feelings and his love for the motherland; and it captures, reflects and expresses the life of a modern society,” it said.
He moved to Kaohsiung in 1985 was professor emeritus at National Sun Yat-sen University until he retired.
