Mend-Ooyo started writing poems at the age of thirteen. In an interview for the WSJ he explains he became interested in writing, thanks in part to Dorjiin Gombojav. D.Gombojav was a controversial poet and translator who had alienated officials in Ulaanbaatar. He was sent, as punishment, to teach at the remote rural school Mend-Ooyo attended. Mend-Ooyo related to the interviewer that he wrote his first lines of poetry under D.Gombojav's guidance. "He taught me the importance of Mongolian language and our traditions," he says. In the late 1970s, he was one of the founder members of the underground literary group GAL (
Fire). Mend-Ooyo explained that at the time, communist censors wouldn't let groups meet. "They were always watching us, so we had to be very careful and meet in people's homes at night." The GAL group, active in the late 1970s and early 1980s, included mainly Mend-Ooyo,
Ochirbatyn Dashbalbar and D.Nyamsüren. Though GAL was "organised around the so-called Dariganga Three", others were at times involved as well. According to Simon Wickham-Smith, they "came to dominate the poetry scene during the subsequent ten or fifteen years, and their work is vital for a proper understanding of recent literary history in Mongolia." GAL transformed during the 1980s into an "independent flow of literary writing called
GUNU", whose writers "nowadays exercise(s) the greatest influence on Mongolian literature." In the 1980s, Mend-Ooyo was allowed to publish some of his poetry after it was vetted by officials. Later, in 1988, Mend-Ooyo became a member of the Mongolian Writers' Union. In 1980, he published his first book of poetry,
The Bird of Thought. Many were to follow. After the
1990 Democratic Revolution in Mongolia and the end of single-party communist rule, he started to publish more of his work, "including the writing that espoused his pastoral roots and eventually became his best-known poems." Since his first book, he has published over twenty other books of poetry, and over a dozen novels and children's books.
Altan Ovoo (
Golden Hill) is an ongoing work of poetic fiction. First published in 1993, its fifth edition was published in 2010.
Altan Ovoo has been translated into English by Simon Wickham-Smith in 2007.
Altan Ovoo has been the focus of Simon Wickham-Smith's Ph.D. dissertation at the
University of Washington. He explains that "Mend-Ooyo's poetic novel
Altan Ovoo offers a vision of nomadic literature based as much on the history and worldview of Mongol nomadic herders as on the late twentieth century Mongolia, poised between Soviet-influenced socialism and Euro-American democratic capitalism, in which it was written."
Gegeenten (
The Holy One), published in 2012, is a modern example of the traditional Mongolian genre of
namtar, non-canonical biographies of Buddhist saints intended to be read by common people. Mend-Ooyo explains that
Gegeenten tells the story of the Noton Hutagt
Dulduityn Danzanravjaa. It tells "of his realisation of, and how he expressed, the secret wisdom in the teaching and practise of the historical Buddha and his descendents." The story, according to the writer, "also reveals how Danzanravjaa's life speaks to Mongol intellectual culture and the nomadic tradition of the Gobi area in which he lived, and how this tradition is an expression of the land and the environment in which he lived." According to Maria Petrova,
Gegeenten "can be called the first prose work, where the image of the great Gobi Noenkhutukhta (sic) and poet D.Ravzhi (sic) found artistic expression." Mend-Ooyo writes his poetry by hand. He tried to write his poetry on the computer. He says of this experience: "It was amazing how easy and peaceful it was to erase what I had written, to begin again, to change words and to rearrange them, and to adjust the rhythm of a poem. When I had finished my poem, I printed it out. I read it. The spirit with which I had been born was missing, there was no mental engagement in it." And: "I understood that my manuscript was the soul of my poem, the source of its spiritual power. A writer's manuscript is the calligraphy which shows the unrepeatable beating of their heart, the pathway through their warm life." == Awards ==