(From The Paris Review. Link to the complete article given below) In 1979, Guy Davenport’s second book of […]
Chinese poetry
….. the Chinese language—with all its dialects, creoles, sister languages, and God knows what all—has changed a great […]
By Wen Zongduo/Li Wenfang Many Chinese poets say that this year will be special for them, a view […]
By Xing Yi While Zhao Lihong is defined by his prose in China, the writer says poetry is […]
Debates over the necessity of educating Chinese youth in ancient poetry and prose are never-ending. Some question whether […]
A database of Chinese poems and classics of literature will soon be open to viewers at home and […]
From the University of Washington Post Blog
There’s a famous Chinese saying that “the misery of the state leads to the emergence of great poets” (guojia buxing shijia xing)–or more literally, “when the state is unfortunate, poets are fortunate.” These words come from a poem by the Qing dynasty historian Zhao Yi (1727–1814), observing the phenomenon in which classic works of poetry often appear during times of calamity: war, famine, dynastic downfall, and so on.
Nick Admussen on the poetry of Liu Xiaobo, 2010 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize: The Boston Review Xiaobo’s poems […]
Singaporean poet Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé interviews Fiona Sze-Lorrain on Bai Hua’s Wind Says
There’s something alluring about reading poetry in translation. Some words, and the particular meanings they are bound to, simply don’t exist in other languages. With translation comes the complex act of rendering such meaning, the translator’s work a kind of precious vocation that helps bridge stories and cultures and people. That a rare poet like Bai Hua has an accomplished poet like Fiona Sze-Lorrain to bring his work to an English-speaking audience is wonderful. The result is a beautiful collection that helps the reader understand a poet of such quiet restraint and largeness of heart. Of his new work, Sze-Lorrain writes: “With its mosaic of references and quotes in synchronic and diachronic modes, the materiality of the language fabric in Bai Hua’s recent work can only thicken. More than bearing mere emotional weight, it is as much a palimpsest as a collage of competing and superimposed textual intensities.”
It is with great anticipation that a reader approaches any new work by Bai Hua. Bai Hua, after all, penned a modest ninety poems over the last thirty years. Born in 1956, he is well-known as one of the more prominent of post-Misty poets in 1980s China, eventually receiving the Rougang Poetry Award and Anne Kao Poetry Prize.
