Tashi Rabten is a Tibetan writer and poet in the Tibetan province of Amdo, present-day Sichuan Province. He was released last year in March after serving a four-year sentence at Mianyang Prison in Sichuan. He was a student at the North-West University for Nationalities and wrote for the now-banned Tibetan language journal Shar Dungri (‘Eastern Conch Mountain’) and also published Trag-yig (‘Blood Letters’), a compilation of his poems, notes and writings on the situation in Tibet following the 2008 protests.
In a recent conversation that is being circulated on various social media sites, Tashi Rabten talks about his experiences as a university student and political prisoner, and his newfound faith in the power of poetry.