We will also preview works will be published by Queen’s Quarterly winter 2022, Epoch Poetry Quarterly in Taiwan (创世纪诗刊 2022)冬季刊。
This is a part of Anna Yin’s project: To explore poetry/painting from Indigenous and Chinese sources with analyses and translations for cross-cultural bridging. We thank the Canada Council for the Arts and CPAC for support!
Luo Fu (1928-2018), a great poet of modern Chinese poetry, was born in Hunan, China. In 1954, he founded the Epoch Poetry Quarterly with Zhang Mo and Ya Xian, and served as the chief editor for many years. He has authored 37 collections of poems, and his works have been translated into English, French, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Swedish and other languages.
Yan Li (poet and artist) was born in Beijing in 1954. He started writing poetry in 1973 and painting in 1979. He was a member of the pioneering art group “Star Painting Club” and the literary group “Today” in Beijing in 1979, and held the first solo exhibition of pioneering art in China in 1984. In 1987, he founded the poetry journal “First Line New York” (which ceased publication in 2000) and resumed publication in New York in June 2020, where he continues to serve as editor-in-chief. He is the president of the Overseas Chinese Writers’ Association.
Anna Yin’s editorship of Mirrors and Windows (just published), an INTERNATIONAL anthology of poems that she has translated from English into Chinese and from Chinese into English is a landmark–an exquisitely rendered, intellectual/artistic touchstone–for the continued conversation between English (Canadian) poets and those of China that she has been singlehandedly enhancing (on the Canadian side) for at least a decade now.
Anna’s Poundian contribution to our mutual enrichment is graced spectacularly by poet-publisher Michael Mirolla of Guernica Editions, who not only agreed to publish this significant volume, but has graced it with a memorably elegant, yet plain cover–like the moon-over-water that so besotted Li Po. Once again, Guernica has served notice that it is an international heavy-hitter.
We are so lucky to have this unprovincial press in our literary culture–just as we are lucky to have the pioneering, cosmopolitan sensibility of Anna Yin uniting Occident and Orient via East-West Poems in Translation (which is the subtitle). Not to be political, I will say that I think this kind of outreach and intellectual community is urgently needed at a time when anti-Asian racism has reared its very ugly head and also at a time when Western vs. China/Russia rivalry has given rise to some pseudo-warmongering, particularly from the West.
But I don’t stress that. I stress that this book is a fine achievement. Please consider ordering copies. AND let us extend this model to other translation anthologies of other Canadian ‘multicultures.’
Blessings to Anna & Michael!
Triumphant creativity to us all!
–GEC
George Elliott Clarke 4th Poet Laureate of Toronto (2012-15) 7th Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada (2016-2017)
A.F. Moritz and Anna Yin discussed poetry, translations and life experiences. They also talked about how other poets’ work had inspired their own writing. Here are videos from the event.
Our first session: Poetry in Translation: Molly Peacock and Anna Yin was a great success. There were 91 people joined us. Thank you Molly, Yang and all poetry/translation lovers, book lovers for supporting. Thank the League of Canadian Poets for funding. Thanks Guerinca Editions.
Here also from Molly’s thank-you note:
The conversation between Anna Yin and Molly Peacock about poetry translation from English to Chinese launched lots of ideas, and we so appreciate your support, either in person or in spirit. 谢谢 /多謝
A partial list of over 90 Canadian and American attendees, from Boston to Maryland, from Ottawa to Costa Rica to Detroit, from Vancouver to Colorado and from New York to Toronto, with gratitude from Molly for your presence, oh poets and translators, lawyer and arborist, IT coder and actor, painter, print-maker & portraitist, financiers and fiction writers, therapists, nonfiction writers, teachers and editors–& scholar-husband:
Gary Alexander, Bernice Baeumler, Susan Boone, Cathie Borrie, Helen Bournas-Ney, Lara Bozabalian, Madeleine Brown, Amy C. Clark, Mike Curtis, Dana Delibovi, Alison Edwards, Cindy Frenkel, Davidson Garrett, Michael Groden, Rachel Hadas, Jenine Holmes, Bob Kaplan, Mary Louise Kiernan, Anita Lahey, Deena Linett, Ashley Mabbitt, Wendy Mark, Bronwyn Mills, Irina Nikolova, Dawn Hansen Pergakes, Craig Poile, Ellen Rachlin, Janet Read, Patria Rivera, Lindsay Royce, Dale Matthews Satorsky, Jane Seskin, Terrill Soules, Norman Stock, Tim Suermondt, Helen Tzagoloff, David Williams, Joyce Wilson, and Pui Ying Wong.)