Reading by Yu Xiang 宇向, moderated by Bei Dao 北島
Date: 10 Aug (Sat)
Time: 7:30pm – 9:00pm
Venue: The Commercial Press Tsimshatsui Book Centre, B1/F., Miramar Shopping Centre, 132 Nathan Road, Tsimshatsui, Kowloon
Tag Archives: Fiona Sze-Lorrain
Asymptote Reviews Bai Hua’s Wind Says
The new issue of Asymptote features Henry Leung’s review of Wind Says 风在说, poems by Bai Hua 柏桦 translated by Fiona Sze-Lorrain. Here’s what he has to say on the poetry and translation:
Beginning especially with the “Hand Notes on Mountain and Water” section in Wind Says, his poems become more staccato, numbered, and jagged, pinballing from image to image—freeing up the range of movement. One of my favorite lines is section 4 in “Hand Notes,” which reads in its entirety: “He has a dawn-like spirit, but his punctuality expresses his sadness.” And the poem ends with a rhyme of action that would not be so poignant or direct without the sharp cuts of white space around each line:
26
He smashes ants with a hammer.
27
That maid picks up and walks away with two pieces of dog shit.
That old man rubs two peaches like rubbing two testicles.
These are uninflected juxtapositions of images. They don’t require explanation or rhetoric; the images spin a vitality out of their own mysteries.Sometimes I wonder if certain lines that fall flat—such as “infinitely, infinitely …” in “Character Sketches,” a line so poor compared to its succeeding line with the same function, “fiddling with an eternal bell on a bike”—are flaws of the original, or of the translation, or simply of the incapacity of English to carry abstractions the way Chinese can. On the translation itself, I must note some occasional awkwardness that is misdirecting more than productive—”Opposite windows open” is a mistranslation of what would mean “the windows opposite”; “The third story (can’t help but) begin(s) from romance” is an overcomplication of the original parenthetical; and so on—but overall the translation is admirable. Sometimes Sze-Lorrain even improves on the original, as in the exquisite cadence of “who blows now / who is fire / who is the convulsing arm of a new flower” in “Beauty.” And by no means can I fault a translator who can bring us this couplet from “Fish”:
Born as metaphor to clarify a fact:
the throat where ambiguous pain begins
Interesting, though, that amidst a discussion of translation, Leung would focus on the line “That old man rubs two peaches like rubbing two testicles” without mentioning that this is, in fact, a mistranslation: the line in Chinese is 那老人搓着两个核桃若搓着两个睾丸, so the old man is rubbing walnuts, not peaches.
Manoa Winter 2012: On Freedom–Spirit, Art, & State
Winter 2012
The various meanings of freedom are difficult to explain in the discursive language of theory and philosophy. But authors of fiction, poetry, and other narrative forms—using metaphor, parable, and figurative speech—are often at home with what is difficult and too subtle for reason alone.
Residing in countries throughout Asia and North America, the authors in On Freedom help us understand the need for cultural, spiritual, and intellectual freedoms in order to have a life that is fully realized.
New translations of fiction by A Yi and Zhang Yihe (translated by Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping), non-fiction by Woeser (translated by Dechen Pemba), and poetry by Chen Dongdong (translated by Fiona Sze-Lorrain), co-edited by Frank Stewart and Sze-Lorrain.
To purchase individual copies, please click here.
To purchase subscriptions, please visit the University of Hawai‘i Press ordering page.
SCMP on Bai Hua’s Wind Says
The South China Morning Post has published a review of Wind Says 风在说 (Zephyr Press), by Bai Hua 柏桦 and translated by Fiona Sze-Lorrain.
It’s a positive review, but it’s a horribly written one: full of cliches about Chinese essences (“Messages are conveyed in sharp but poignant images, paying homage to Chinese and Western writers of the past, as well as to the philosophical tradition in which Chinese writing is steeped.”), the untranslatability of translated poetry (“one must question how much is lost to the non-Chinese reader in translation”), and literary historical nonsense (“realism is, after all, a defining characteristic of Misty poetry, a reaction against restrictions on art during the Cultural Revolution”). By the time we reach the end line (“In Bai’s poetic voice, one can almost feel the winds of change blowing through the pages”), I feel queasy and am embarrassed to say I like the translations in a book that could inspire such homely homilies.
Oh, and there’s a picture of Chinese mountains enshrouded in mist–you know, because Bai Hua is post-“Misty,” get it?
Bai Hua’s Wind Says at Received & Recommended
The weblog Received & Recommended has received–and recommends–Wind Says 风在说 (Zephyr Press), by Bai Hua 柏桦, translated by Fiona Sze-Lorrain (click here for their write-up of Fiona’s Water the Moon). Here’s what they say:
Bai Hua’s poetic style, potent and complex, when paired with Fiona Sze-Lorrain’s remarkable talent for translation continues to be a pleasure to read in Wind Says. The English poems in Wind Says appear along side their Chinese originals, so this small collection is perfect for people who read both English and Chinese texts.
Wind Says, by Bai Hua
WIND SAYS
Bai Hua 柏桦
translated from Chinese by Fiona Sze-Lorrain
ISBN 978-0-9832970-6-2 (paper) $15
6 x 8
200 pages
Considered the central literary figure of the post-Obscure (or post-”Misty”) poetry movement during the 1980s, Bai Hua is one of the most influential poets in contemporary China. Born in 1956 in Chongqing, he studied English literature at Guangzhou Foreign Language Institute before graduating with a Master’s degree in Western Literary History from Sichuan University. His first collection of poems, Expression (1988), received immediate critical acclaim. A highly demanding writer, Bai Hua’s poetic output is considerably modest but selective: in the past thirty years he has written only about ninety poems. After a silence of more than a decade, he began writing poetry again in 2007. That same year, his work garnered the prestigious Rougang Poetry Award. A prolific writer of critical prose and hybrid texts, Bai Hua is also a recipient of the Anne Kao Poetry Prize. Currently living in Chengdu, Sichuan, he teaches at the Southwest Jiaotong University.
Panax Ginseng Review of Sky Lanterns
Henry Leung’s review of Sky Lanterns, the new issue of Mānoa edited by Frank Stewart and Fiona Sze-Lorrain, has appeared at Lantern Review. Here’s how it begins:
Manoa’s recent “Sky Lanterns” issue spotlights “new poetry from China, Formosa, and Beyond.” The issue features contemporary poets organized in order of age: “not as a bow to hierarchy,” writes editor Fiona Sze-Lorrain in her prefatory note, “but to trace a possibility sensitive to time.” From a first glance at the cover, we see a juxtaposition of the old and the new in the grandly staged Soul Stealer, photographs by artists Zeng Han and Yang Changhong. In the diptych’s top half is Mulian Opera #11: costumed figures of an ancient theater tradition, including mythic animal avatars such as the monkey king, who populate a green landscape with a seven-story pagoda obscured by mist. Meanwhile, in the bottom half is World Warcraft #11 (dated a year later): costumed figures of neo-contemporary archetypes, including the princesses, warlocks, and demons familiar to role-playing video gamers, who populate a craggy landscape with a line of skyscrapers obscured by what may be polluted smog. The “possibility sensitive to time” in the photographs is appropriate to this volume because the costumed figures above and below reflect the modulations of culture, place, and society over time—and yet exist as avatars of myth and imagination outside of time. The same might also be said of the figures and expressions of poetry.
Sky Lantern Reviewed at Honolulu Weekly
Sky Lantern, the recent Mānoa issue edited by Frank Stewart and Fiona Sze-Lorrain has been reviewed at the Honolulu Weekly. Here’s how it begins:
Even for the well-versed poetry enthusiast, Chinese poetry can begin and end with the short bangs of “The River-Merchant’s Wife.” But we’ve traveled far from Ezra Pound’s translation of that eighth century love letter. The road from Cho-Fu-Sa veers and switchbacks to the White Terror, the Cultural Revolution, Tiananmen Square, sweatshop labor, and Richard Gere’s plea for a free Tibet. Not to mention, the trees dressed according to season and the everyday vicissitudes of light. Edited by Frank Stewart and Fiona Sze-Lorrain, Sky Lanterns: New Poetry from China, Formosa, and Beyond illuminates this complicated terrain with stunning and provocative poems, prose, and photography.
Click the image above for the full review.
Sky Lanterns: Poetry from China, Formosa, and Beyond
The new issue of Mānoa is available, edited by Frank Stewart with Fiona Sze-Lorrain:
Sky Lanterns brings together innovative work by authors—primarily poets—in mainland China, Taiwan, the United States, and beyond who are engaged in truth-seeking, resistance, and renewal. Appearing in new translations, many of the works are published alongside the original Chinese text. A number of the poets are women, whose work is relatively unknown to English-language readers. Contributors include Amang, Bai Hua, Bei Dao, Chen Yuhong, Duo Yu, Hai Zi, Lan Lan, Karen An-hwei Lee, Li Shangyin, Ling Yu, Pang Pei, Sun Lei, Arthur Sze, Fiona Sze-Lorrain, Wei An, Woeser, Yang Lian, Yang Zi, Yi Lu, Barbara Yien, Yinni, Yu Xiang, and Zhang Zao.Sky Lanterns also features images from the Simple Song series by photographer Luo Dan. Traveling with a portable darkroom in remote, mountainous regions of southern China’s Yunnan Province, Luo Dan uses the laborious nineteenth-century, wet plate collodion process of exposure and development. In exquisite detail, he captures a rural life that has remained intact for centuries.
Click the image for ordering information.
China Daily on Path Light
The China Daily has an enthusiastic review by Chitralekha Basu of the recently published Path Light: New Chinese Writing, titled “One for the Ages.” The opening paragraph matches enthusiasm with detailed context:
This is a collector’s item. And not just because of its obvious historical importance. The first edition of Pathlight: New Chinese Writing magazine is a metaphor of the cooperation between Chinese and Western agencies – in this case, the influential People’s Literature magazine, edited by Li Jingze and the Paper Republic team, helmed by Eric Abrahamsen – to showcase Chinese literature to the rest of the world. What an absolute gem this slender 160-page volume is, in terms of the range of voices it covers, some of them translated for the first time. Kudos to the translators for bringing out the varied textures, emotions, cadences and even the visual appeal in some of the lines penned by the featured Chinese writers represent.
The review says less about the poetry: only,
The poetry section features six names, most of them born on the cusp of 1970. These, including the widely translated Xi Chuan, are seasoned, well-honed voices, who have been at their craft for a while, having evolved their own poetic idiom.
I loved the minimalist poems of Yu Xiang, especially the one about making friends with fellow women and then losing them along the way. It’s a very universal theme and quite unsentimentally put across.
I’m also a fan of Yu Xiang 宇向, and of Fiona Sze-Lorrain‘s translations. I have to admit, however, that I feel a bit queasy every time I see a reference to anyone–especially Xi Chuan–in the Chinese press that makes mention of being “widely translated.” Coming from a non-Chinese national such as Basu it’s probably no more than an objective–if relative–fact, or even praise of Xi Chuan’s border-crossing quality. But–and this may seem counter-intuitive to anyone not familiar with the political context of Chinese cultural standards–very often when certain Chinese figures talk about Chinese writers being “widely translated,” it comes with an insinuation that the writer is translated because his or her work is not “Chinese” enough (as if such a thing were quantifiable, or at odds with gaining an international following). Leaving aside the question of whether Xi Chuan is in fact “widely translated,” I’ve encountered situations where people have used this observation to denigrate his work–even when referring to what I think of as his most “Chinese” pieces!