Ever Mo Yan

Spiegel Online interviews Mo Yan, who says “I am guilty.”

The Guardian writes that “Mo Yan dismisses ‘envious’ Nobel critics.”

Mo Yan writes that “Good Literature Should Let Readers Discover Themselves”

One “Mo reason for culture promotion”

The Complete Review notices Mo Yan has more than one agent with “full rights to represent him in copyright talks and any other negotiations on cooperation.”

Sabina Knight on “Mo Yan’s Delicate Balancing Act.”

Martin Winter blogs about Mo Yan and Liao Yiwu 廖亦武

Chad Post on a book that didn’t make the Best Translated Book Award long list.

Charles Laughlin on “Mo Yan’s Nobel Prize for Literature: Resetting Chinese Literature” (a development of his article on “What Mo Yan’s Detractors Get Wrong“).

Perry Link at the Chinese University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law, 28 March: “A Tale of Two Nobels: Liu Xiaobo & Mo Yan” (in Chinese). Click to register.

At the Popup Chinese Sinica Podcast Alice Xin Liu, David Moser, and Brendan O’Kane talk to Kaiser Kuo about Mo Yan’s writing & reception, including a quick analysis of the three anecdotes from his literary acceptance speech. Click the link or listen here:

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Chinese Literature Dissertation Reviews: Jeongsoo Shin’s From Bewitching Beauty to Effete King

Transgendering of the Peony in East Asia Dissertation Reviews has posted Sixiang Wang‘s review of Jeongsoo Shin‘s From Bewitching Beauty to Effete King: Transgendering of King Peony in Medieval Chinese and Korean Literature. Here’s how it begins:

The peony has come to have a variety of associations in the East Asian literary tradition. Its luxurious petals have signaled wealth and beauty while its peculiar, seedless manner of reproduction has come to symbolize sterility and empty luxury. It has even come to represent political power as a symbol of China as a nation, arguably one of its dominant associations today. In his fascinating account of the peony’s literary history, From Bewitching Beauty to Effete King, Jeongsoo Shin seeks to understand the evolving connotations of this one flower. Shin not only examines the literary traditions associated with the peony in medieval China, but traces the flower’s cultivation and literary symbolism as it traveled to Silla Korea (57 BCE–935 CE). As the peony’s gender was transformed in this process of transmission, it also acquired a separate set of symbolic resonances.

Xi Chuan cameo in Michael Palmer Poem

Last October Brooklyn Rail published a new poem by Michael Palmer titled “His Artificial Lover Sings a Wordless Song,” which mentions Xi Chuan. Here’s an excerpt:

Will the despoilers have it all
to themselves? Even the textured sky?

Xi Chuan, we often ask the same
questions it seems, or is it simply

that together we studied the stars
in Mechanicsville? Orion’s Belt shown,

the Sisters and the Drinking Gourd.
Words formed

their own
seamless patterns

one moment,
sundered the next.

Read the whole poem here.

Hua Li reviews Shi Zhi’s Winter Sun

Winter Sun by Shi ZhiHua Li reviews Winter Sun by Shi Zhi 食指, translated by Jonathan Stalling. Here’s how it concludes:

Winter Sun is a long-overdue collection of one of the leading figures in contemporary Chinese poetry. I will close with an excerpt from one of Shi Zhi’s notable poems, “Oh, Nietzsche”: “Through so many sleepless nights he endured the torture of disease / Yet nurtured the poetic longing of solitude and indifference / An infant thought undergoes the trauma of birth / To finally cry out in an earth-shattering voice.”

2013 Princeton Poetry Festival Schedule

Friday, March 15
Saturday, March 16

Morning

10:00 am – 12:30 pm New Jersey State Finals of Poetry Out LoudPoetry Out Loud logo

Afternoon

Afternoon

2:00 pm Gala Opening ReadingIntroduction by Paul MuldoonWinner and Runner-up in Poetry Out Loud
Gabeba Baderoon
Bei Dao
Stephen Dunn
Sheriff Ghale
Jorie Graham
Lizzie Hutton
Amit Majmudar
Bejan Matur
Don Paterson
Gary Whitehead
Xi Chuan
Monica Youn
2:00 pm ReadingIntroduced by Jeff DolvenAmit Majmudar
Gary Whitehead
Monica Youn
3:15 pm Intermission 3:15 pm Intermission
3:30 pm Panel –
Poet and Difficulty (1)
Moderated by Paul Muldoon
Bei Dao
Sheriff Ghale
Jorie Graham
Lizzie Hutton
Amit Majmudar
Gary Whitehead
Monica Youn
3:30 pm Panel –
Poetry and Difficulty (2)
Moderated by Paul Muldoon
Gabeba Baderoon
Stephen Dunn
Bejan Matur
Don Paterson
Xi Chuan
4:45 pm Intermission 4:45 pm Intermission
5:00 – 6:00 pm ReadingIntroduced by James Richardson
Don Paterson on ‘“The tribute of the current to the source’: Frost, Time and Measure”
5:00 – 7:00 pm ReadingIntroduced by Tracy K. Smith
Bei Dao
Sheriff Ghale
Jorie Graham
Don Paterson
6:00 – 7:30 pm Break

Evening

8:00 pm ReadingIntroduced by Michael Dickman
Gabeba Baderoon
Stephen Dunn
Bejan Matur
Xi Chuan

Residency Fellowships for Chinese Poetry & Translation at Vermont Studio Center

Residency Fellowships for Chinese Poetry & Translation – Apply by April 1st

Henry Luce Foundation Chinese Poetry & Translation Fellowships at VSC

The Vermont Studio Center (VSC) invites applications for its Chinese Poetry & Translation Fellowships Program supported by the Henry Luce Foundation. In 2013, VSC will award 10 outstanding Chinese poets and literary translators with 4-week joint residencies to create new work individually and in collaboration as part of VSC’s diverse creative community.

Applications for this inaugural round of VSC/Luce Foundation Chinese Poetry & Translation Fellowships are accepted online or in printable form at www.vermontstudiocenter.org/apply as part of VSC’s April 1, 2013 international fellowships deadline.

2013 VSC/Luce Foundation Chinese Poetry & Translation Fellowships:

Five awards for poets whose primary language is Chinese. These awards include roundtrip travel and a discretionary stipend.

Five awards for English-language translators working with Chinese poetry.

These fellowships are available to individual poets and translators, as well as established working pairs.

For more information, visit www.vermontstudiocenter.org/literature-in-translation-lit-program

Xi Chuan on Translating Poetry at Middlebury

Tuesday, 3/12, 4:30 PM:

Translating Poetry: A roundtable discussion with Chinese poet Xi Chuan, Central Academy for Fine Arts (Beijing), and his translator, Assistant Professor Lucas Klein of City University of Hong Kong, and Middlebury College faculty. Xi Chuan is one of the most well-known contemporary poets writing in the Chinese language, and is the author most recently of Notes on the Mosquito: Selected Poems (New Directions, 2012), a bilingual edition with English translation by Lucas Klein, a 2000 graduate of Middlebury College (Chinese and LITS) and now in the department of Chinese, Translation and Linguistics at the City University of Hong Kong. (Middlebury College Robert A. Jones ’59 House conference room)

Sponsored by Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs, Department of Chinese, John D. Berninghausen Professorship, East Asian Studies Program.

Xi Chuan at Middlebury College

Poetry Reading by Xi Chuan

Monday, March 11, 7:00-8:00 PM

Axinn Center 229, Middlebury College

“Xi Chuan’s surprising poems reach into tight corners of mind and matter, impersonal but intimate, new to be heard but also oddly familiar. An impressive voice—bold and calm”— Gary Snyder.

Xi Chuan, one of the most influential of contemporary Chinese poets, will read in Chinese; Lucas Klein (Middlebury class of 2000) of the City University of Hong Kong will read his English translations from Notes on the Mosquito: Selected Poems (New Directions, 2012). The reading will be followed by discussion and question and answer in English with the poet and his translator. Open to the public.

Sponsored by the Department of Chinese, Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs, Program in East Asian Studies, and the John D. Berninghuasen Professorship in Chinese.

Xi Chuan at Harvard

Event Title: Notes on the Mosquito – Poetry Reading and Talk by Xi Chuan 西川

Speaker: Xi Chuan
Moderators: David Der-wei Wang, Lucas Klein

Friday March 8, 2013 12:00-1:30pm Common room, 2 Divinity Ave.?
Sponsored by the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations and the CCK Foundation Inter-University Center for Sinology

Poet Xi Chuan will read from his collection Notes on the Mosquito: Selected Poems 《蚊子志》and discuss his work with translator Lucas Klein (City University of Hong Kong) and David Der-wei Wang (Harvard University)