Forty Years of TODAY: Poetry Reading & Book Launch

Poets & Speakers:
Bei Dao, Mang Ke, Xu Xiao, Huang Rui, E Fuming, Wan Zhi, Gu Xiaoyang, Song Lin, Chen Dongdong, Han Dong, Zhu Wen, A Yi, Liu Wai-tong, Yang Qingxiang, Xiao Haisheng, Tian Shui

Musicians: Zhou Yunpeng, Zhong Lifeng

Date: 23 December 2018
Time: 16:00-19:00
Address: 1/F, T. T. Tsui Building, University Museum and Art Gallery, The University of Hong Kong, 90 Bonham Road, Pokfulam, Hong Kong
Language: Putonghua

Visual Director: Ann Mak
Music Director: Dickson Dee

Organizer: TODAY
Co-organizers: University Museum and Art Gallery, The University of Hong Kong | Hong Kong Poetry Festival Foundation | Oxford University Press

2018年12月23日爲《今天》創刊紀念日,世界各地的《今天》作者、編輯將於香港共赴一場交換文學記憶的聚會,分享《今天》四十年來的歷程與思考。新舊《今天》的同仁或素昧平生,或多年來僅靠郵件溝通,有些人甚至從未晤面。這次既是一次重逢,也是一次相遇的機會。《今天》現誠邀讀者前來相聚,共同見證這份文學雜誌踏入下一個十年的啟航。

日期:2018年12月23日 (星期日)
時間:16:00-19:00
地點:香港薄扶林般咸道90號 香港大學美術博物館徐展堂樓1樓
語言:普通話 This activity will be conducted in Putonghua
費用:費用全免,無需報名,歡迎各界人士參與。Free admission. No registration required. All are welcome.
朗誦及發言嘉賓(排名不分先後):北島、芒克、徐曉、黃銳、鄂復明、萬之、顧曉陽、宋琳、陳東東、韓東、朱文、阿乙、廖偉棠、楊慶祥、肖海生、天水
特邀音樂人:周雲蓬、鐘立風
音樂總監:李勁松
視覺總監:麥安
主辦:《今天》雜誌
協辦:香港大學美術博物館、香港詩歌節基金會、牛津大學出版社

Eleanor Goodman on Contemporary Chinese Poetry from Zephyr

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As part of Paper Republic‘s series of blogs for Global Literature in Libraries throughout February, Eleanor Goodman writes on Zephyr Press, which she says “has done more to raise the profile of contemporary Chinese poetry in English translation than any other press today”:

Their books are carefully curated, well edited, and beautifully produced. Above all, their translators (here I must profess that I am one of them) tend to be at the top of the field, which is of course essential to the making of a good book in English.

Alongside mentions of their publications of Han Dong 韩冬, Bai Hua 柏桦, Lan Lan 蓝蓝, and Yu Xiang 宇向, Goodman specifically writes about her translation of Wang Xiaoni 王小妮, about Andrea Lingenfelter’s translation of Zhai Yongming 翟永明, Austin Woerner’s translations of Ouyang Jianghe 欧阳江河, Jennifer Feeley’s translation of Hong Kong poet Xi Xi 西西, Steve Bradbury’s translation of Taiwanese poet Hsia Yü 夏宇, and my own forthcoming translations of Mang Ke 芒克.

With with “deep resources of scholarship and natural talent to draw upon,” she writes, it is

this mix of qualities—the best of the contemporary Chinese poetry world combined with translators who are also careful readers and appreciators of poetry—that makes the Zephyr collection so unique and valuable. These books are a labor of love from start to finish, and it shows in the final products. There is simply no better introduction to the contemporary Chinese poetry scene available today.

Click the image above for the full article.

Eberlein on Han Dong in English

Xujun Eberlein in LARB looks at Han Dong 韩东 in English and asks, “Is There a Good Way to Translate Chinese Poetry?
Her answer is clearly yes. She asks, “why would I want to read a translation that has departed from the original? Wouldn’t I be better off reading original poetry in the target language, instead of a half-baked translation?”

She looks at Han as presented in two translations, one the recent Phone Call from Dalian with translations by Nicky Harman and Maghiel van Crevel, and the other the anthology Another Kind of Nation. Eberlein writes:

Why do we read translated poetry after all? If specific manners of expression and thinking, different uses of words and images, serve as the carrier of a different culture and reality, the stuff that draws in the translator and reader alike, what can translation accomplish? For poetry, language—the nuance of language—is paramount. We care not only about a poem’s meaning; we care equally, if not more, about how thoughts and observations are expressed in unfamiliar, refreshing ways. Form is part of content in poetry translation.

Click the image above for the full article, and for my own takes, see my reviews of A Phone Call from Dalian and Another Kind of Nation.

Nicky Harman featured in China Daily

Chinese literature's biggest barriers abroad not language itselfChina Daily Europe has a feature on literary translation from Chinese to English, focusing in particular on Nicky Harman, translator of poet Han Dong 韩东 and others.

Harman, who specializes in fiction, nonfiction and poetry, began learning Chinese in 1968 and previously taught translation at Imperial College London.

“At the start, my reasons for learning Chinese were superficial. I was fascinated with the culture and the great geographical region, as well as the people and the language,” she says. “Everything was different from the West.”

Equally challenging are Han’s novels and poetry, she says, as he uses beautiful words so they needed to be translated beautifully.

“As a translator I need to be a chameleon,” she tells Chinese students at the London workshop.

Chinese literature's biggest barriers abroad not language itself

Translators need to be paid, and because the job often requires lots of time, especially turning Chinese works into English, Harman says many have to do part-time jobs.

“They need money to buy food, to pay rent and bring up their children,” she says, explaining that few people can afford to work as translators full time.

Click either image for the full article.

Chinese Poetry at Epiphany

The journal Epiphany, with Nick Admussen as poetry editor, has published a suite of contemporary Chinese pieces, including the following:

  • Chun Sue 春树 (translated by Martin Winter)
  • Mu Cao 墓草 (translated by Scott E. Myers)
  • Liu Waitong 廖偉棠 (translated by Audrey Heijins)
  • Xiao Kaiyu 肖开愚 (translated by Christopher Lupke)
  • Haizi 海子 (translated by Nick Kaldis)
  • Sai Sai (Xi Xi) 西西 (translated by Jennifer Feeley)
  • Hsia Yü 夏宇 (translated by Steve Bradbury)
  • Yao Feng 姚风 (translated by Tam Hio Man and Kit Kelen)
  • Han Dong 韩东 (translated by Nicky Harman)
  • Huang Lihai 黄礼孩 (translated by Song Zijiang)

Click the image above for an online sample, including pieces by Mu Cao and Hsia Yü:

He says the world is very big
We should go outside and look around
That’s how one wards off sadness
We should go to a gay bathhouse in Beijing
And experience group sex with a hundred people
Or go to Dongdan Park, or Sanlihe, or Madian
And know a different kind of lust
If I could visit Yellow Crane Tower
I’d have new inspiration for writing poems
He says all the great artists
Were fine comrades like us

Asian Cha reviews Han Dong & Lan Lan

ImageLu Jin at Cha reviews A Phone Call from Dalian 来自大连的电话, by Han Dong 韩东 as edited and translated by Nicky Harman, and Canyon in the Body 身体里的峡谷, by Lan Lan 蓝蓝 as translated by Fiona Sze-Lorrain.

While Han Dong’s poetry is manly, controlled and ironic, Lan Lan’s work is highly lyrical sensuous, delicate, with a tender sophistication … For both titles, the apt, delicious English translations add new possibilities to the aesthetic life of the poems. Despite a Imagefew missteps, imagery and wit continue to surprise, and the original sensibility is eloquently transmitted.

Click either of the images to link to the review.

Review of Han Dong’s A Phone Call from Dalian

200The Modern Chinese Literature & Culture list has posted my review of A Phone Call from Dalian 来自大连的电话 (Zephyr Press), by Han Dong 韩东, edited by Nicky Harman. Here’s a passage from the middle where I make a point about how having too many anthologies of contemporary Chinese poetry in English has come at the cost of single-author collections, and what that means for how we read and understand the poetry in question:

The situation of Han Dong within a social context is easy enough to assert, but harder to demonstrate in English, which involves an array of political considerations. I count eleven anthologies of contemporary Chinese poetry published in English around the world since 1990, for instance, but not one single-author collection published in English outside of Asia by a poet living in the PRC until 2008 (the single-author collections of Chinese poetry that were published in English were either poets dead by 1990, poets from Taiwan or Hong Kong, or exiles). The overabundance of anthologies would seem like sufficient background within which to place Han Dong, but anthologies necessarily focus on breadth rather than depth, and as a result readers may come away with a sense of motifs common to the poetry as a whole, but not of how individual poets respond either to trends or concerns in poetry or to predicaments in society—which is where style finds definition. In other words, the anthology hides what makes an individual poet individual.

Click on the image above for the whole review.

Nicky Harman Interviews Han Dong

Han Dong – London, April 2009Peony Moon has published an interview with Han Dong 韩东 as conducted by his translator Nicky Harman. Here’s a teaser:

NH: You famously said that, “poetry does not go beyond language” (“诗到语言为止“). Do you still believe that? If not, what do you think are the most important principles of poetry?

HD: When I said that, it was to counter the prevailing view (in China) that “the written word must express a moral view”, and to emphasize the importance of language in poetry. But ultimately this was just another creed and, to that extent, one-sided. I understand poetry in a more rounded way now, not just as in opposition to something else. Poetry is an absolute, or at least an indication of an absolute. Analysing poetry is of limited use. Poetry doesn’t exist in the abstract, only in specific poems, in the writings of a particular poet, and we shouldn’t try to over-explain it. I dream of being able to write poems which need little or no explaining, and can be understood intuitively. Readers don’t need training but poets do, and that training ought to include how to stir people’s hearts.

Click on the image above for the full interview.

Languages Great and Small: Evolutions and Revolutions in Poetry: International Poetry Nights Hong Kong 2013 Panel

Languages Great and Small: Evolutions and Revolutions in Poetry

Moderator: Prof. Leo Ou-fan Lee
Fri, 22 November 4:00 – 5:30 p.m.
Venue: Chinese University of Hong Kong

Adonis (Syria), Dunya Mikhail (Iraq), Olvido García Valdés
(Spain), Lee Seong-bok (South Korea), Han Dong 韓東 (China), Natalia Chan 洛楓 (Hong Kong)