In honor of the recently-concluded India-China Writers Dialogues, here’s a re-post from October 7, in the earliest days of the Notes on the Mosquito blog:

I just came across the following video, a lecture by Xi Chuan in English from Spring, 2009, to the Columbia University Alumni Association in Beijing. He discusses the relationship between Xu Zhimo 徐志摩 and Rabindranath Tagore in the context of China, India, and the West and their impact on modern Chinese poetry (with honorable mentions of Kenneth Rexroth, Amy Lowell, and Ezra Pound). He ends with a reading of the poem “My Grandma” 我奶奶 in Chinese, with my English translation read by Austin Woerner.

(apologies to readers in the PRC; I was unable to locate the video on Youku)