This poem is by Liu Xia, a contemporary poet and painter. Liu was born in Beijing in 1961, where she worked as a civil servant and participated in the literary scene. She married the now deceased recipient of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize, the dissident Liu Xiaobo. She spent nearly eight years under house arrest before being allowed to move to Germany, where she currently lives.

In ‘Empty Chairs’, the speaker contemplates the physical signs that might remind one that there is no other person present. The repeated ‘empty empty empty’ gives the opening a mournful tone, and it fills the entire line with a sense of emptiness. Does this push towards a paradox? Can something be filled with nothing?

There are also interesting points that could be considered regarding works in translation. Our Year 7s will tell you that there is alliteration, which sews together the ‘empty chairs’ and the word ‘everywhere’, but does this occur in the original? Have the translators played a creative role in this work? What role does a translator have? Do they have creative rights?

Liu makes reference to Vincent Van Gogh’s paintings of empty chairs, which removed the sitter and focused upon the object. Does this relate to the idea that all art exists in the gap between an object and the artist? Do you agree with this statement? As a test, try to think about your favourite poem about nature. Is the poet trying to fill in the gap between herself and the thing being described, that is, is she trying to understand it? Are we keen to describe objects because their silent nature seems confusing to us? Do we, like Liu, want to know ‘what’s breathing inside them’?

Does the poem have special resonance because it was written when Liu was under house arrest, contemplating the daily reminders of her loneliness, the fact that nobody was there to sit on the many chairs? Does this matter? Do we need to know the personal story behind every work of art?

Can we bring our own ideas to the poem? Do the ‘Empty Chairs’ make us think about our own school? The many chairs lying empty at the moment might be a reminder that things are not quite in their normal state. This might make us question the very nature of our school. Is FHS just a physical building near Sloane Square? If you visited and saw a host of empty rooms, could you truly say that you had seen FHS? You have answers.

Empty Chairs

Empty empty empty

so many empty chairs

everywhere. They look

charming in van Gogh’s paintings.

I quietly sit on them

and try to rock

but they don’t move?—

they are frozen

by what’s breathing inside them.

Van Gogh waves his paintbrush?—

leave leave leave

there’s no funeral tonight.

He looks straight through me,

and I sit down

in the flames of ??his sunflower

like a piece of clay to be fired.

By Liu Xia

Translated from the Chinese by Jennifer Stern and Ming Di.