Category: Poetry

Poetry from or on China, generally Chinese poetry in translation

Poetry

Wishes from Hong Kong

Anthony Tao

A new poem by Anthony Tao

Editor’s note: On June 30, China passed a new security law in Hong Kong, just in time for the 23rd anniversary of the handover the following day. Various citizens and outside observers fear that this marks the end of Hong Kong’s special freedoms and status within China. Anthony Tao wrote the following poem in celebration and commiseration of a city he has grown to love.


I wish you could see it, the verticality,
pylons of glass steel and stone
rising to spike empyrean, straining
toward the welkin where sky and sea
flip, keelboat and junk yawing in clouds
while the waves reel and roll.

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Poetry

Spring’s White Blossom

Huang Fan

A new poem by Huang Fan, translated by Josh Stenberg


It’s like a white hand, suddenly over my face
Two months already, I’m still not used to it
Warm over my sighing embrace
So even my mother tongue gets carefully filtered?

It’s the jail gate of the tongue, imprisoning how much hot air
It keeps even love at a distance
It says our mouths are like wounds it needs to tightly bandage
It’s like a white moon, makes me bury my desires in a dream.

It’s this spring’s most abundant white blossom
Trying to match tragedy’s hue
It’s also winter in a patient’s lungs
Freezing to permafrost on everyone’s faces
And when I complain while wearing you, my mouth fills with shame.

Poetry

Poetry Between Languages

Simon Shieh

New poems from Spittoon magazine, by Li Jiaoyang and Chen Bo

Writing poetry in a second language is like floating in zero gravity; it is freeing and terrifying at the same time. Many jump out of their mother tongue, but few find grace in the free-fall. Li Jiaoyang and Chen Bo – both native Mandarin Chinese speakers whose English poems are published below – have each found a distinct voice in a foreign tongue. Not only that: they have succeeded in presenting the English language to native speakers as something wild and new.

These two writers demonstrate clearly why to learn a new language is to see the world in a different way. It is not hard to see the productive potential that language learning has for poetry, whose gift is to show us the world in new ways, and also to understand how a Chinese-speaking poet might, upon learning English, see a fresh new set of tools with which to paint.

Poetry

A Century of China’s New Poetry

Kerry Shawn Keys

Six poems by Mo Yan and others, spanning generations – edited by Ming Di

China’s New Poetry Movement was started in Beijing in 1917 by Hu Shi (1891–1962) and reinforced by the May 4th Movement in 1919. But what was its esthetic goal, what influence does it still exert on cultural life in China, and what has been challenged? New Poetry From China: 1917-2017, a new anthology, tries to address the many dimensions of the movement, covering works from most of the important poets still relevant today. 120 poets were selected, from Hu Shi to contemporary voices, including dissident poets. Mo Yan and Liu Xiaobo are back to back on the pages, and many other poets are translated into English for the first time. Two major traditions within the New Poetry Movement have been pushing each other forward: Spoken Language Poetry and Neoclassical Poetry, both are experimental in language and form but with different approaches. We hope you enjoy this small sample of six poems below, representing the span of different generations of poets, from Zheng Min, born in 1920, to Su Xiaoyan born in 1992. – Ming Di