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.
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!
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.
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.