{"id":245,"date":"2011-11-01T12:09:17","date_gmt":"2011-11-01T04:09:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=245"},"modified":"2011-11-01T12:10:53","modified_gmt":"2011-11-01T04:10:53","slug":"weinberger-subin-in-hongkong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=245","title":{"rendered":"Weinberger & Subin in Hongkong"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had lunch yesterday with Nina Subin<\/a> & Eliot Weinberger<\/a> (New Directions <\/a>author and translator of Octavio Paz <\/a>and Bei Dao \u5317\u5cf6<\/a>, among others), in town for work with Chinese University Press<\/a> on their way to Vietnam and Laos. The topics–they’re epic conversationalists–ranged from Cantonese cuisine to museums under colonialism to out-of-print sinology to the Poetry Foundation <\/a>to American politics. And of course to Xi Chuan, whose photo-portrait by Nina from a few years ago should appear on the forthcoming Notes on the Mosquito<\/em>, and whom Eliot met with recently during Xi Chuan’s New York stop on the Push Open the Window <\/a><\/em>reading tour. In Oranges & Peanuts for Sale<\/em><\/a>, Eliot mentions a trip to China where he met a Chinese poet “polymath, equally at home discussing the latest American poetry or Shang dynasty numismatics”; that was Xi Chuan.<\/p>\n

Here’s a clip of Eliot reading at the International Poetry Nights Hong Kong two years ago:<\/p>\n