Early life Chen was born on 7 September 1934 in
Huangxian,
Shandong, China. In 1949, she went to Taiwan due to the
Chinese Civil War. After graduating at
Providence University, she eventually hosted the "Literary Showcase" program of Education Radio and the "Literary Salon" program of
Taiwan Television for several years.
Literary career In April 1962, after graduating from the "New Poetry Research Class" sponsored by the Chinese Literature and Art Association, she cofounded the literary club "Vineyard Poetry Society" with Wang Zaijun, Gu Ding, Wen Xiaocun, Li Peizheng, Song Houying and others (all of whom were students of the research class). The club was located in her home in the
Yonghe District. On July 15 of the same year, the Vineyard Poetry Society issued the quarterly
Vineyard. The magazine called for "all poets who are isolated from society and readers to wake up early, bravely abandon nihilism, obscurity and weirdness, and return to reality, return to clarity, and create poems with flesh and blood." It advocated the popularization of poetry and adhered to the principle of "health, clarity and China". The "Vineyard Poetry Society" thus laid the foundation for the transformation of contemporary Taiwanese poetry creation from "Westernized" modernism to "local" realism. In 1965, Chen was elected as the president of the Vineyard Poetry Society succeeding Li Peizheng. On 25 August 1969, Chen together with Ji Xian,
Zhong Dingwen, Lin Lu, Luo Men,
Rong Zi and Lu Di represented Taiwan at the "1st World Congress of Poets" in Manila, Philippines. Chen eventually won a commemorative gold medal at the conference. In 1975, she left the poetry world and went to
Costa Rica to study
Spanish for several years. In the 1980s, she moved to
Redwood City in the
San Francisco Bay Area,
California and participated in the establishment of the Chinese cultural organization "Chinese Art Society" in the said Bay Area, and served as its president and consultant. As of March 2024, Chen is the honorary president of the Chinese Art Society.
Poetry Most of Chen's works are poetry that pursue the realm of "beauty" and describe the scenery by combining the real and the imaginary, borrowing the subject to express ideas. The poem as follows: Her poems have rarely been selected for poetry anthologies other than the
Vineyard Anthology. This is due to her straightforward style, in which the lyricism is too explicit, and the overall superficiality is related. In addition, although Chen is a feminist poet, some of her poems are considered by some scholars to be praising the center of patriarchal order. Her poems also reflects the spirit of traditional Chinese culture, profoundly and implicitly expressing the glory and continuity of traditional Chinese culture, and describes the lives of the local poor in Taiwan. Since most Taiwanese female writers in the mid-20th century wrote
novels and
essays, Chen belongs to a group of pioneers of Taiwanese female poetry that includes
Rong Zi,
Chen Xiuxi,
Fangge Dupan and
Chang Hsiu-ya. These poets all adopted the form of modern poetry to express their feminine consciousness, proving that true feminist poetry as a group has emerged in Greater China. ==Honors==