Word on the street is that Days When I Hide My Corpse in a Cardboard Box 自我紙盒藏屍的日子, the selected poems of Lok Fung 洛楓 (Natalia Chan), translated by Eleanor Goodman, is back from the printers.

In honor of the book, then, here is a recent article about Goodman on Lok Fung from the Seattle Review of Books, where Lok Fung was June poet-in-residence. Goodman says of Lok Fung,

“She is not just a poet but also a serious thinker about cultural studies, cultural issues, pop culture, the influence of high literature and also popular literature and music on a population.”

“She’s also very feminist in a very interesting way,” Goodman says. “A lot of her poems are love poems about failed love. She writes about makeup, about getting her hair done, about fashion.” Fung [sic.], she argues, focuses on these “quintessentially girly or feminine or seemingly frivolous sort of things” and uses them to discuss “how women function in society and how women think and feel and reflect on their own lives.”

I would, however, like to register a serious disagreement with Goodman on one point. She says, “the translation of contemporary Chinese poetry really is a field of about seven people who are working very seriously.” I find this very disappointing. The number of people working seriously on the translation of contemporary Chinese poetry certainly reaches into the double digits!

The SRB also includes a handful of Lok Fung’s poems, in Goodman’s translation, here.

Click on the image for the article in full.