Art Beck reviews The Changing Room

Art Beck reviews The Changing Room, poems by Zhai Yongming 翟永明 translated by Andrea Lingenfelter. He writes:

Other English versions of some of these poems are accessible on the internet … Various readers may prefer various translations of various poems, but Lingenfelter’s volume provides an added plus in that she worked directly with Zhai. The reader has the benefit, not only of Lingenfelter’s bilingual skills, but of being invited to share a long, ongoing conversation that took place in life as well as on the page. In Lingenfelter’s words: “I could not have completed this project without the gracious help and encouragement of Zhai Yongming herself, who has shown me around Chengdu … taking me to (historic) sites … all the while placing everything we were looking at in a larger context. She has also treated me to many memorably wonderful meals … .” Translation is, after all,  a matter of the tongue, and, ultimately, nourishment.

Canaan Morse on “Poetic Creation and the Online Environment”

From Paper Republic:

Chinese poet and poetry critic Qin Xiaoyu invited the Proletarian to attend a meeting at Peking University last Friday on poetry in online media. The meeting was sponsored and chaired by Yang Erwen, founder of ArtsBj.com (北京文艺网), and Yang Lian, whom Yang Erwen has worked into some advisory position at the website. Having no prior knowledge of the event, the Proletarian thought it was just going to be another stereotypical academic meeting, where people made airy speeches over an audience checking their cell phones; who knew that the first item of news would be one of significant importance? …

Well-known critic Tang Xiaodu moderated the first half of the meeting, while Yang Lian (who sounds a lot more like Ge You than I could ever have imagined) chaired the second half. Also at the table were Zhai Yongming, Xi Chuan, Qin Xiaoyu, Zhang Qinghua, Leng Shuang, Lan Ye, Zang Di, Ou Ning, Yang Xiaobin, Shang Zhen, Jiang Tao and a few others …

Morse also mentions Xi Chuan’s “observations on poetry throughout Chinese history.” Click here for the whole piece.

Yang Mu wins Newman Prize for Chinese Literature

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Taiwan-born and -raised poet Yang Mu 楊牧 has won the Newman Prize for Chinese Literature from the University of Oklahoma.

Yang was nominated by UC Davis professor Michelle Yeh, co-translator with Lawrence R. Smith of Yang’s collection No Trace of the Gardener (another volume, translated by Joseph Allen, was published as Forbidden Games & Video Poems: The Poetry of Lo Chʻing [羅青]). The other nominees were Hsia Yü 夏宇, Yang Lian 杨炼, Zhai Yongming 翟永明, and Ouyang Jianghe 欧阳江河, nominated by Jennifer Feeley (U. Iowa, USA), Michel Hockx (U. London SOAS, UK), Wolfgang Kubin (Bonn U., Germany), and Zhang Qinghua 张清华 (BNU, PRC), respectively.

Rare for contemporary Chinese poetry, all nominated poets have single-author collections available in English translation. Coincidentally, three of the nominees–Hsia, Zhai, and Ouyang–have had their only books in English published by Zephyr Press.

Shanghai Poetry Reading: Zhai Yongming & Andrea Lingenfelter

POEMS FROM THE CHANGING ROOM 更衣室

A BILINGUAL POETRY READING AT JAMES COHAN GALLERY

ZHAI YONGMING 翟永明 WITH AWARD-WINNING TRANSLATIONS BY ANDREA LINGENFELTER

SATURDAY, 15 SEPTEMBER AT 6PM

James Cohan Gallery: Yueyang Road 170, Building 1, Lane 1 near Yongjia Road | 岳阳路170弄1号楼1楼,近永嘉路

click the image for more details

Andrea Lingenfelter wins NCBA for Zhai Yongming translation

Congrats to Andrea Lingenfelter for winning the Northern California Book Awards for her translation of The Changing Room (Zephyr Press), a collection of poems by Zhai Yongming 翟永明. Click here for my my review of The Changing Room, and here for the full list of NCBA nominees and winners (Michael Palmer won in the category of poetry for his New Directions book Thread).

Jade Ladder’s Poets

I’ve compiled a list of the poets whose work appears in English translation in Jade Ladder, the new anthology of contemporary Chinese poetry edited by Yang Lian 杨炼, W N Herbert, Brian Holton, and Qin Xiaoyu 秦晓宇. The anthology presents the work of poets by birth year, but the work is separated into sections–lyric poems, narrative poems, neo-classical poems, sequences, experimental poems, and long poems–so I’ve put together this alphabetical list of the poets represented. Poets in bold (23, by my count) are those not included in the recent Copper Canyon anthology, Push Open the Window (of whom 19 of the 49 are not included in JL; click here for that anthology’s table of contents). Also, since Jade Ladder is English-only, I’m not sure of every poet’s name in Chinese, and consequently have left some blank. If you know, or spot any other errors, let me know.

  1. Bai Hua 柏桦
  2. Bei Dao 北岛
  3. Chen Dongdong 陈东东
  4. Chen Xianfa 陈先发
  5. Duo Duo 多多
  6. Ge Mai 戈麦
  7. Gu Cheng 顾城
  8. Hai Zi 海子
  9. Han Bo韩博
  10. Hu Dong
  11. Hu Xudong 胡续冬
  12. Huang Canran 黄灿然
  13. Jiang Hao 蒋浩
  14. Jiang He 江河
  15. Jiang Tao 姜涛
  16. Liao Yiwu 廖亦
  17. Lü De’an 吕德安
  18. Ma Hua 马骅
  19. Mai Cheng
  20. Mang Ke 芒克
  21. Meng Lang 孟浪
  22. Ouyang Jianghe 欧阳江河
  23. Pan Wei
  24. Qin Xiaoyu 秦晓宇
  25. Qing Ping 清平
  26. Senzi 森子
  27. Shui Yin
  28. Song Lin 宋琳
  29. Song Wei
  30. Sun Lei
  31. Sun Wenbo 孙文波
  32. Wang Ao 王敖
  33. Wang Xiaoni 王小妮
  34. Xi Chuan 西川
  35. Xiao Kaiyu 肖开愚
  36. Ya Shi
  37. Yan Li
  38. Yang Lian 杨炼
  39. Yang Xiaobin 杨小
  40. Yang Zheng
  41. Yi Sha 伊沙
  42. Yu Jian 于坚
  43. Yu Nu 余怒
  44. Zang Di 臧棣
  45. Zhai Yongming 翟永明
  46. Zhang Danyi
  47. Zhang Dian
  48. Zhang Shuguang 张曙光
  49. Zhang Zao 张枣
  50. Zhong Ming
  51. Zhou Lunyou
  52. Zhu Zhu 朱朱
  53. Zou Jingzhi

Zhai Yongming wins Italian literary prize

Zhai Yongming 翟永明 has just won Italy’s Piero Bigongiari del Ceppo di Pistoia prize for 2012. Follow the link or click the image above for the press release in Italian, with a quotation from Zhai explaining her relationship to Chinese classical and modern poetry.

For my review of Andrea Lingenfelter‘s translation of Zhai’s work in Changing Room (Zephyr Press), click here.

ALTA Links Round-up

Over at ALTAlk, the blog for the American Literary Translators Association, Matt Rowe has posted a Links Round-up of some of the news & articles focusing on translation that have been circulating recently. It’s a great compilation of Events, Readings, Reviews, and more, and includes my review of Zhai Yongming’s 翟永明 Changing Room, translated by Andrea Lingenfelter, Paper Republic‘s Eric Abrahamsen on the ups & downs of Chinese translation, a report from the London Book Fair by Publishing Perspectives on The “gatekeepers” of literary translation, and more. Take a look!

Canaan Morse on Contemporary Chinese Poetry

Over at the Metre Maids poetry blog, Pathlight poetry editor Canaan Morse has a poignant and touching post about contemporary Chinese poetry–featuring discussion of my translation of Xi Chuan’s “The Body and History” 体相与历史. Canaan explains:

Obscure to a Western reader, “double corneas” and heavy earlobes are references to Xiang Yu and Liu Bei, two of the great heroic figures of early Chinese history. In fact, all of the described abnormalities are references to specific mythicized figures. They are characters whom historical and poetic narrations have always served, never satirized.

Canaan’s framework is to discuss awakening to his aesthetic in Chinese poetry in the context of his father’s passing away, and the fading of his poetic influence–as I said, poignant and touching–but he also discusses an Andrea Lingenfelter translation of Zhai Yongming 翟永明, and Eleanor Goodman‘s translations of Lei Pingyang 雷平阳 and Shen Wei 沈苇.

Lucas Klein on Zhai Yongming’s Changing Room

My review of the first book-length collection to appear in English of contemporary Chinese poet Zhai Yongming 翟永明, Changing Room (Zephyr Press) translated by Andrea Lingenfelter, is now online at Rain Taxi.

Here’s how I begin the review:

Some poets write about the problems of language and indeterminacy; some write about society and culture; some write about gender. Zhai Yongming, China’s pre-eminent contemporary woman poet whose work has finally been published in book form in English, is unique in her ability to combine all three dimensions—the interpretive function, social change, and being a woman—into one relentlessly strong poetic expression.