Category Archives: Publications

Path Light: New Chinese Writing

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Issue #1 of Path Light: New Chinese Writing, edited by Li Jingze 李敬泽, Alice Xin Liu, and Canaan Morse, is already out at the Beijing Bookworm and other venues (once it’s got an online presence / ordering page I’ll put up the link). Read this for the Xinhua English writeup, or take a look at Bruce Humes‘s list of some of the contents over at Ethnic ChinaLit:

Editorial Director Qiu Huadong (邱华栋) revealed some of the first issue’s contents:

  • Excerpts from the novels that won the 2011 Maodun Literary Prize, plus interviews with their authors.  He did not specify which novels would be excerpted, but the five winners were: On the Plateau, Zhang Wei (你在高原 , 张炜著) ;  Skywalker, Liu Xinglong (天行者, 刘醒龙著); Massage, Bi Feiyu (推拿, 毕飞宇著); Frogs, Mo Yan (蛙, 莫言著) ; and One Sentence Worth Thousands, Liu Zhenyun ( 一句顶一万句, 刘震云著) See Rewarding Writer-Officials? for insight into the controversy surrounding this year’s Maodun Prize.
  • Short stories by authors born in the 1970s and 1980s, including Jiang Yitan (蒋一谈), Qi Ge (七格) and Di’an (笛安).
  • Poems by Xi Chuan (西川), Lei Pingyang (雷平阳) and others
  • Short stories by other writers including Li Er (李洱)
  • Introductions to new books such as Ge Fei’s Spring in Jiangnan (春尽江南, 格非著), Wang Anyi’s Tiānxiāng (天香, 王安忆著), Jia Pingwa’s Old Kiln (古炉, 贾平凹著), and Fang Fang’s Wuchang City (武昌城, 方方著)

The Xi Chuan pieces they’ve published are “Looking at the Mural in the Ruicheng Temple of Eternal Joy” 观芮城永乐宫壁画, “Ill Fortune H 00325” 厄运 H 00325, “Dragon” 龙, and “The Body and History” 体相与历史.

Words & the World in the stores

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Words & the World, the multilingual anthology and twenty-volume box-set of the International Poetry Nights, is now in stores, as I noticed when in a bookstore in Tsim Sha Tsui 尖沙咀. Right before snapping this picture, I saw a browser stop by the display, read a few lines, and head off to buy one of the pocket editions. No joke!

If you’re not in the Hongkong area or can’t find these books in a shop near you, click on the image to get to the ordering page.

BBC: When borrowing from China makes the US richer

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When Xi Chuan and Zhou Zan were on their reading tour of the US promoting the Copper Canyon anthology Push Open the Window, the BBC caught up with them and interviewed them about Chinese poetry. On the 3rd of November they posted the article and video, titled “When borrowing from China makes the US richer.”

While I’m all for contextualizing poetry in terms of international politics and economics–writing, after all, is about something, and it often refers, in its oblique ways, to current global realities–I have to say I found the BBC report pretty lame. The article’s brushstrokes are obstinately broad, saying nothing more nuanced than “China holds trillions of dollars in US debt and the eurozone countries are looking to Beijing for bailout cash, but not all international transactions come at a price. A cultural exchange is also under way between east and west.”

Meanwhile, the accompanying video–which, unfortunately, I cannot embed into this post–hits the only two notes about China the BBC expects will resonate with English-speakers: it starts out talking about censorship, and ends up talking about classical Chinese poetry as calligraphy pans by and a reed flute lulls in the background. To be clear, Xi Chuan’s writing engages with the classics of Chinese poetry in fascinating and unexpected ways, and as a teacher of ancient Chinese literature and former calligrapher, Xi Chuan enjoyed the chance to get a private tour of the Freer Gallery and some of the pieces not normally on display. But rather than exhibit how Xi Chuan draws on the Chinese tradition, the BBC video suggests he’s an Ancient Poet (albeit one who has to deal with Maoist censorship)! When Xi Chuan reads from my translation of “Exercises in Thought” 思想练习 (a poem that opens with a demand that we reevaluate Nietzsche) Chinese chamber music kicks in and the accompanying image is a scroll of calligraphy–as if that were the text of the poem!

New Publication

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The new issue of Plume is up, with excellent new pieces from the likes of Cole Swensen and Georg Trakl (translated by Mark Wunderlich). And Xi Chuan, in my translation of “The Ant’s Plunder” 蚂蚁劫 (according to Daniel Lawless’s Editor’s Note, their “first work from a Chinese poet”). Plume only publishes twelve pieces a month, so their dedication of space to Xi Chuan is all the more exciting.

Thanks to Steve Bradbury for pointing me to Plume!

Bei Dao’s Note for the International Poetry Nights Hong Kong 2011

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The following is Bei Dao‘s “Note from the Editor,” which I translated for the International Poetry Nights‘ Words & the World anthology:

Poetry exists between the word and the world. With the key of language, poetry unlocks the world from its state of concealment. As Heidegger pointed out in Poetry, Language, Thought, “Truth, as the clearing and concealing of what is, happens in being composed, as a poet composes a poem. All art, as the letting happen of the advent of the truth of what is, is, as such, essentially poetry.”

At present, we are experiencing a retreat to human civilization’s last line of defense—ours is an era void of spiritual direction, an era of lost cultural value and ideals, an era ridden with linguistic garbage. We live amidst separate jargons: scholarly jargon, businessmen’s jargon, political jargon, and more; but at the same time, what has greatest currency is the language of entertainment, the language of the internet and the new media, and in the internet age of so-called globalization, vulgar and elegant meld to form a common pact, simplifying humanity’s linguistic expressivity.

What, then, can poetry do? This ancient term takes on a particular significance today. With this in mind, the theme of the 2011 International Poetry Nights in Hong Kong is Words & the World.

We have invited ten international poets and ten Chinese-language poets to join our international poetry festival. In addition to a bi- or tri-lingual pocket-sized selection for each invitee, we have also produced a multilingual anthology containing work by all our poets. In editing these two publications, I have been joined by Professor Gilbert Fong, Dr. Shelby Chan, Dr. Lucas Klein, and Ms. Amy Ho. On behalf of all of them, I extend our sincerest thanks to the poets and translators, as well as to the friends and members of the organizing committee, without whose assistance none of this would have been possible.

If you’re in the Hongkong area, I hope to see you there!

Words & the World Anthology

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In addition to the twenty-volume box set I wrote about Friday, the International Poetry Nights (taking place this week from Thursday to Sunday) has also published the Words & the World anthology, which is now back from the printers’:

The anthology features the work of all twenty participating poets, a sampling of what appears in the individual booklets. The Xi Chuan poems included are “I Bury My Tail” 我藏着我的尾巴, “A Song of No Matter” 無關緊要之歌, “A Song of the Corner” 牆角之歌, “Friends” 熟人, “Manes of Yellow” 黃毛, “A Sanskrit Brick from Nanzhao (738 – 937): after a Vietnamese poet” 南詔國梵文磚：仿一位越南詩人, and “Falcons, Swans, and Pearls” 獵鷹、天鵝與珍珠.

The list price is HK$160, but will be sold at half off during the festival.

Tinfish Retro Series Writeup

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At the Honolulu Weekly, Matthew DeKneef has a writeup of Tinfish Press’s Retro Series of chapbooks, Small Press, Big Fish, including special mention of Xi Chuan’s Yours Truly & Other Poems. Here’s an excerpt:

From kitchen sink approaches to poems with more intentional goals, part of the fun is reveling in those novel gems. Personal favorites include Revilla’s “Pull Without Push,” Aitken’s “The Day Danno Died (In Memory of James MacArthur)” and [Xi] Chuan’s “Yours Truly.” Though most exciting about the Retro Series … is feeling a sense that each has a charged responsibility to their words. That they matter. Or maybe that’s just how you feel as reader. Either way, you’ve been hooked.

New Issue of Cerise Press

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The new issue of Cerise Press, the French-based English-language online literature journal, is now available. In addition to translations of poems by editor Fiona Sze-Lorrain of Chinese poets Lan Lan 蓝蓝 and Bai Hua 柏桦 (who’s also interviewed), the current issue features translations of Korean poet Ko Un by Brother Anthony of Taizé and of French poet Auxeméry by one the most secretly influential writer of the last half-century, Nathaniel Tarn. Click the image below for the current issue:

For my feature “Xi Chuan: Poetry of the Anti-lyric” from the last issue, with translations of “Power Outage” 停电, “Re-reading Borges’s Poetry” 重读博尔赫斯诗歌, and “Three Chapters on Dusk” 黄昏三章, click here. (And here for my earlier co-translations of poems by Bei Dao 北岛 with Clayton Eshleman).

Words and the World

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Words & The World, the twenty-volume box set of multilingual pocket-sized poetry books for this year’s International Poetry Nights in Hong Kong (which will take place from the 10th to 13th this month) has been published. It will be on sale at the festival, and in select Hong Kong bookstores soon. Click on the image below for another press release:

The Xi Chuan volume, A Song of the Corner, is a selection of poems that will appear in the forthcoming Notes on the Mosquito (New Directions, 2012), featuring the following pieces: “Somebody” 某人, “The Neighbors” 鄰居, “I Bury My Tail” 我藏着我的尾巴, “A Song of No Matter” 無關緊要之歌, “A Song of the Corner” 牆角之歌, “Friends” 熟人, “Companion” 伴侶, “My Grandma” 我奶奶, “Manes of Yellow” 黃毛, “Drizzle” 連陰雨, “Six Dynasties Ghosts” 六朝鬼魅, “A Sanskrit Brick from Nanzhao (738 – 937): after a Vietnamese poet” 南詔國梵文磚：仿一位越南詩人, and “Falcons, Swans, and Pearls” 獵鷹、天鵝與珍珠.

The other books, featuring the remaining nineteen participants of the International Poetry Nights, are by María Baranda (Mexico), Régis Bonvicino (Brazil), Arkadii Dragomoshchenko (Russia), Bejan Matur (Turkey), Paul Muldoon (Ireland), Vivek Narayanan (India), Tomaž Šalamun (Slovenia), Silke Scheuermann (Germany), Tanikawa Shuntarō (Japan), C. D. Wright (USA), Chen Ko-hua 陳克華 (Taiwan), Ling Yu 零雨 (Taiwan), Luo Chih Cheng 羅智成 (Taiwan), Tian Yuan 田原 (PRC / Japan), Wong Leung Wo 王良和 (Hongkong), Yao Feng 姚風 (PRC / Macau), Yip Fai 葉煇 (Hongkong), Yu Jian 于堅 (PRC), and Yu Xiang 宇向 (PRC). All books include the original language of composition, plus English and / or Chinese translations.

After the Poetry Nights, each book will sell for HK$25, with the whole set at HK$450. During the festival you can enjoy a 50% discount.