Chinese poetry events at Poetry International Rotterdam:
Tag Archives: Qin Xiaoyu
Chinese Poetry at 44th Poetry International Festival Rotterdam


Canaan Morse on “Poetic Creation and the Online Environment”
From Paper Republic:
Chinese poet and poetry critic Qin Xiaoyu invited the Proletarian to attend a meeting at Peking University last Friday on poetry in online media. The meeting was sponsored and chaired by Yang Erwen, founder of ArtsBj.com (北京文艺网), and Yang Lian, whom Yang Erwen has worked into some advisory position at the website. Having no prior knowledge of the event, the Proletarian thought it was just going to be another stereotypical academic meeting, where people made airy speeches over an audience checking their cell phones; who knew that the first item of news would be one of significant importance? …
Well-known critic Tang Xiaodu moderated the first half of the meeting, while Yang Lian (who sounds a lot more like Ge You than I could ever have imagined) chaired the second half. Also at the table were Zhai Yongming, Xi Chuan, Qin Xiaoyu, Zhang Qinghua, Leng Shuang, Lan Ye, Zang Di, Ou Ning, Yang Xiaobin, Shang Zhen, Jiang Tao and a few others …
Morse also mentions Xi Chuan’s “observations on poetry throughout Chinese history.” Click here for the whole piece.
DJS Translation Award for 2012
from Poetry East West 诗东西:
DJS Translation Award for 2012
News Release December 26, 2012
DJS Translation Award for 2012 will be given to the following individuals whose new translations of Chinese poetry have formed a significant part of “New Cathay: Contemporary Chinese Poetry 1990-2012” (to be published by Tupelo Press in 2013):
Nick Admussen (for translation of Ya Shi)
Christopher Lupke (for translation of Xiao Kaiyu)
Jonathan Stalling (for translation of Zheng Xiaoqiong)
Katie Farris (for co-translation of Duo Duo, Liao Yiwu, Zhang Shuguang, Feng Yan, and Hu Xudong)
Afaa Weaver (for co-translation of Sun Wenbo and Jiang Hao)
Tony Barnstone (for co-translation of Jiang Tao, Hu Xudong and Li Shumin)
Kerry Shawn Keys (for co-translation of Song Lin)
Eleanor Goodman (for co-translation of Bai Hua)
Jennifer Kronovet (for co-translation of Wang Xiaoni and Lan Lan)
Elizabeth Reitzell (for co-translation of Sun Wenbo)
Cody Reese (for co-translation of Hu Xudong)
The above translators will share the DJS Translation Award for 2012.
The 2011 DJS Translation Award recipient was Neil Aitken for his co-translations of poetry by Chinese poets Lü De’an, Sun Wenbo, Jiang Tao, Qin Xiaoyu, Yang Xiaobin, Zhang Zhihao, Liu Jiemin, Yu Xiang, Lü Yue, and Jiang Li.
DJS Translation Award was established by DJS Art Foundation, a private entity, to promote literary exchange between China and other countries and to encourage quality translation of poetry. DJS has supported several projects such as the multi-lingual journal Poetry East West. For more information, please visit the DJS pages on the website of Poetry East West: http://poetryeastwest.com/djs-translation-award/
Mark Burnhope Reviews Jade Ladder
At Magma Poetry Mark Burnhope has posted his review of Jade Ladder, the recent anthology of contemporary Chinese poetry published in the UK. Burnhope is new to Chinese poetry, and he doesn’t know whether family names come first or last in Chinese, but he raises some nice questions about translation in his enthusiastic take on Chinese poetry today. Here’s how it begins:
In his essay concluding Jade Ladder, Brian Holton discusses the trials, tribulations, negotiations and compromises involved in translating Chinese poetry into English. Some of Yang Lian and Qin Xiaoyu’s first choices were shelved, he writes, “because the joke just wasn’t funny in English”, poems “were speaking only to Chinese readers’, or they ultimately “fell flat in translation”. The translators generally avoided footnotes unless they appeared in original poems, or unless they would “transform a poem that otherwise would be closed to the reader into something more accessible and enjoyable”.
Sean O’Brien reviews Jade Ladder
The Guardian has published Sean O’Brien’s review of Jade Ladder: Contemporary Chinese Poetry, edited by Yang Lian 杨炼, W N Herbert, Brian Holton, and Qin Xiaoyu 秦晓宇. It’s a fine and enthusiastic take written by an obviously engaged reader conversant with the current goings-on of poetry worldwide. Here’s how it begins:
The diversity and richness of contemporary Chinese poetry defy description. As Zang Di understatedly puts it in “Cosmo-Sceneriology”, “We seem / to have come to a new place”, but the place itself is multiple. In “100 Years of Solitude for the New Poetry”, the same poet suggests that poetry “has dismissed language” and finds that “yes, for an instant, it was almost not written by you”. To the reader coming newly to the subject, or with the competing translatorial templates of Ezra Pound and Arthur Waley in mind, these are exciting declarations, even as, or maybe because, they resist confident analysis.
O’Brien also singles out Xi Chuan for mention, with an interesting observation that dovetails with some of what he writes about Chinese and Eastern European literature in the afterword to Notes on the Mosquito, “The Tradition This Instant” 传统在此时此刻:
A western reader is likely to be reminded here of Mandelstam’s ill-fated “Stalin Epigram“. Although Mao is seen posthumously by a poet born in 1960, subsequent Chinese administrations have proved just as interested in the ideological demeanour of the arts as were Kruschev and his successors in Russia. Xi Chuan’s “Commandments” could be a poem from the eastern bloc of the 1950s (in this translation it recalls Zbigniew Herbert): “you shall not covet / so it’s not a bad idea to crown yourself king in a dark room / and why not cut a skeleton key and carry it in your hand? / walk, stop, turn: in that capital city under the light of your sun / you will disdain to open each rusted lock”.
The version of “Commandments” 戒律 quoted here is Holton’s from Jade Ladder. My version is included in Notes on the Mosquito.
Jade Ladder’s Poets
I’ve compiled a list of the poets whose work appears in English translation in Jade Ladder, the new anthology of contemporary Chinese poetry edited by Yang Lian 杨炼, W N Herbert, Brian Holton, and Qin Xiaoyu 秦晓宇. The anthology presents the work of poets by birth year, but the work is separated into sections–lyric poems, narrative poems, neo-classical poems, sequences, experimental poems, and long poems–so I’ve put together this alphabetical list of the poets represented. Poets in bold (23, by my count) are those not included in the recent Copper Canyon anthology, Push Open the Window (of whom 19 of the 49 are not included in JL; click here for that anthology’s table of contents). Also, since Jade Ladder is English-only, I’m not sure of every poet’s name in Chinese, and consequently have left some blank. If you know, or spot any other errors, let me know.
- Bai Hua 柏桦
- Bei Dao 北岛
- Chen Dongdong 陈东东
- Chen Xianfa 陈先发
- Duo Duo 多多
- Ge Mai 戈麦
- Gu Cheng 顾城
- Hai Zi 海子
- Han Bo韩博
- Hu Dong
- Hu Xudong 胡续冬
- Huang Canran 黄灿然
- Jiang Hao 蒋浩
- Jiang He 江河
- Jiang Tao 姜涛
- Liao Yiwu 廖亦武
- Lü De’an 吕德安
- Ma Hua 马骅
- Mai Cheng
- Mang Ke 芒克
- Meng Lang 孟浪
- Ouyang Jianghe 欧阳江河
- Pan Wei
- Qin Xiaoyu 秦晓宇
- Qing Ping 清平
- Senzi 森子
- Shui Yin
- Song Lin 宋琳
- Song Wei
- Sun Lei
- Sun Wenbo 孙文波
- Wang Ao 王敖
- Wang Xiaoni 王小妮
- Xi Chuan 西川
- Xiao Kaiyu 肖开愚
- Ya Shi
- Yan Li
- Yang Lian 杨炼
- Yang Xiaobin 杨小滨
- Yang Zheng
- Yi Sha 伊沙
- Yu Jian 于坚
- Yu Nu 余怒
- Zang Di 臧棣
- Zhai Yongming 翟永明
- Zhang Danyi
- Zhang Dian
- Zhang Shuguang 张曙光
- Zhang Zao 张枣
- Zhong Ming
- Zhou Lunyou
- Zhu Zhu 朱朱
- Zou Jingzhi
Jade Ladder Arrival
I received my copy of Jade Ladder: Contemporary Chinese Poetry from Bloodaxe Books yesterday. Edited by Yang Lian 杨炼, W N Herbert, Brian Holton, and Qin Xiaoyu 秦晓宇, it’s brimming with Chinese poetry from the last thirty-five years, mostly translated by Holton with Lee Man-Kay 李漫琪 and / or Herbert. Jade Ladder includes five Xi Chuan poems–one, “Exercises in Thought” 思想练习, in my translation (which Herbert calls “marvellous work”!), one in Holton’s translation, and two done by Xi Chuan with Bill Herbert. This allows for readers to get a sense of how different translators work, and of course to see different aspects of Xi Chuan’s poetry as they find different expressions in English.
Also of interest, both to scholars and general readers, are the preface by Herbert, the introduction by Yang Lian, the essays by Qin Xiaoyu, and the afterword by Holton.
Words Without Borders on the London Book Fair & Contemporary Chinese Poetry
Last week Words Without Borders was reporting on location from the London Book Fair, and their report from Day 3 is full of excitement about Chinese poetry in English and the newly published Jade Ladder: Contemporary Chinese Poetry, which includes my translations of some of Xi Chuan’s work. Here’s the beginning of their writeup:
The highlight of the third and final day at the Literary Translation Center was a conversation among poets, editors, and translators about an exciting new book of contemporary Chinese poetry. The book is called Jade Ladder—and the panelists discussing it, and related subjects, sounded like just the playful, dissenting and sensitive voices you’d hope to find in such company.
As I posted before, Xi Chuan was one of the panelists at the event, but for some reason WWB didn’t mention him by name; nor did they mention him as part of the Chinese poetry panel with Han Dong 韩东 and Nicky Harman, either, which he also participated in. Ah well.
Jade Ladder Now Available for Order
Click image to order Jade Ladder: Contemporary Chinese Poetry, edited by Yang Lian 杨炼 and William Herbert with Brian Holton and Qin Xiaoyu 秦晓宇.