In yesterday’s mention of Chinoiserie by Karen Rigby I neglected to point out that the book was selected for the 2011 Sawtooth Poetry Prize by Paul Hoover. Coincidentally or not, Hoover–whose co-translations from Vietnamese and German I published in CipherJournal–is one of the featured writers in this month’s Plume.
Click here for my translation of Xi Chuan’s “The Ant’s Plunder” 蚂蚁劫, published in Plume last November.
The new issue of Eleven Eleven, the journal of the MFA Writing Program at the California College of the Arts, is now up, featuring my translations of three Xi Chuan pieces: “Ill Fortune C 00024” 厄运 C 00024, “Ill Fortune O 09734” 厄运 O 09734, and “King of Chess” 棋王.
In addition to lots of great new work in English, the issue also includes new translations of Vladimir Mayakovsky by Alex Cigale and a section of The Bhagavid Gita as translated by Gavin Flood and Charles Martin.
Poetry translator and scholar Jacob Edmond has a new blog to promote his forthcoming book, A Common Strangeness: Contemporary Poetry, Cross-Cultural Encounter, Comparative Literature (forthcoming from Fordham University Press). Using Walter Benjamin‘s take on Baudelaire and flânerie to take a new look at World Literature, Edmond reads Chinese poets Yang Lian 楊煉 and Bei Dao 北島, Russian poets Arkadii Dragomoshchenko and Dmitri Prigov, and Americans Charles Bernstein and Lyn Hejinian. The blog, and especially the book, both promise to be fascinating reads.
While Xi Chuan has less to do with exile, often central to critical discussions of Bei Dao and Yang Lian, I’m sure that Common Strangeness, and common strangenesses, will also be helpful in providing tools to understand both the Chinese and international aspects of the writing of Xi Chuan.
Kurt Devrese‘s Alligatorzine is newly updated, featuring a bilingual recording by Sandra Moussempès & Kristin Prevallet, as well as new work by American greats Heller Levinson (poetry), Will Alexander (prose poetry), and Rachel Blau DuPlessis (collages) (and for Rachel’s take on Xi Chuan at the MLA, click here).
Click these links for Alligator‘s earlier publication of my Xi Chuan translations, “A Personal Paradise” 个人的天堂, “Friends” 熟人, “Companion” 伴侣, “Drizzle” 连阴雨, and selections from “Answering Venus (45 Fragments)” 回答启明星(45断章).
As part of its series on “what writers from around the world see from their windows,” the Paris Review Daily recently featured Matteo Pericoli’s drawing of the view from Xi Chuan’s studio window. The feature also includes a passage from Xi Chuan, which he wrote in English, about his view. It ends:
But the whole city of Beijing was a giant construction site in the 1990s and 2000s, and the view couldn’t last. Once I got used to the buildings in the window, I seldom looked out of it. No trees can reach the fifteenth floor, so no birds perch at my window. When I look out, I see cars running on the bridge. Nothing else.
Last week Miroslav Kirin read his Croatian translations of Xi Chuan–done from my English versions–on Croatian Radio 3. Click here to listen to the show. (I don’t know Croatian, but I can make out a few names and terms–my name, Xi Chuan, New Directions, Du Fu 杜甫, Wang Wei 王維, and oxymoron!)
Last October I posted about Jade Ladder, a new anthology of contemporary Chinese poetry forthcoming in the UK, edited by Yang Lian 杨炼 and William Herbert (with Brian Holton and Qin Xiaoyu 秦晓宇 as associate editors). Recently I’ve been corresponding with Bloodaxe Press about permissions, and while I haven’t seen the final table of contents, I can say that my translations of Xi Chuan’s “Exercises in Thought” 思想练习 and “Commandments” 戒律 are slated to be included. Nice choices!
The second round of proofs for Notes on the Mosquito just came in from New Directions:
It’s getting close!
Also in other contemporary Chinese poetry news, Winter Sun, the selected poems of Shi Zhi 食指, translated by Jonathan Stalling, is now available from Oklahoma University Press–the first book in the Chinese Literature Today Book Series.
Shi Zhi was one of the first poets in the PRC to enact a conscious break with orthodox Maoist style, and as such was a precursor not only to the so-called Obscure Poets 朦胧诗人, but to Xi Chuan and his generation of writers as well. The publication of this book in English represents a big step in introducing English-language readers to the intricacies of contemporary Chinese poetry and the literary history of modern China.
