Hong Kong ( CNN ) -- A needle is inside the body of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo , traveling along his veins and poking at his organs . This piercing imagery is used by the pro-democracy activist in his poem `` June Fourth in My Body '' dedicated to the year 2009 -- the same year he was sentenced to 11 years in prison for inciting subversion of state power . Prior to his arrest , Liu would write a poem every year around June 4 to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown in Beijing and those who lost their lives . `` He is really forcing himself to look at this in order that other people do n't forget , because it has been such a publicly erased moment in history in China , '' says fellow poet Jeffrey Yang , who is based in the U.S. Liu was a fervent participant of the 1989 pro-democracy movement . He occupied Tiananmen Square , led hunger strikes , drafted public opinion polls and lobbied foreigners to donate toward the movement . On June 4 , 1989 , tanks entered the streets around Tiananmen Square and opened fire on demonstrators . Liu escaped relatively unscathed . Imprisonment . Two days after the crackdown , Liu was arrested and imprisoned for nearly 20 months . This was the first of many prison sentences that Liu would serve for speaking out against the Chinese leadership . Liu is currently serving his sentence and could not be reached . It is unclear whether he is able to continue his annual tradition of composing a poem to remember those who died on June 4 , 1989 . However , his works between 1990 and 2009 have been compiled into the anthology `` June Fourth Elegies , '' published in 2012 . Yang translated the collection into English . `` June Fourth in My Body '' is the last entry in the collection and it particularly stands out for Yang . `` The very last poem in the collection is just heart breaking , '' he says . The poem likens the tragic crackdown to a rusting but still piercing needle that has been left inside the activist 's body . `` June 4 was a life-changing and defining date for Liu . Besides , he has been struggling with feelings of guilt as a survivor of the incident , '' says Teng Biao , founder of the rights group China Against Death Penalty . Ending one-party rule . Teng , a well-known human rights lawyer , advised Liu in the drafting of Charter 08 , a pro-democracy manifesto that called for an end to one-party rule . The document ultimately led to Liu 's 2008 arrest and eventual sentencing in December 2009 . In 2010 , Liu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize while imprisoned . To mark the 25th anniversary of the June 4 massacre , we asked Teng to recite the first three stanzas of the moving poem in a recording ( see above ) , and Yang to recite his English version . Translator Yang adds that : `` The collection is an annual return to the same event , over and over again . Sometimes he 's in prison , sometimes he 's at a bar , at other times he 's at home , but the one thing that is striking is that as the years pass , the emotional content is still very much alive through his work . ''
Jailed activist Liu Xiaobo was a participant of the 1989 pro-democracy movement . Every year , Liu writes an elegy for the martyrs of the Tiananmen Square massacre . `` June Fourth in My Body '' was dedicated to the year 2009 , the same year Liu was given an 11-year sentence . Friend and fellow activist Teng Biao recites an extract from the moving poem .