Thank you to the Mississauga Arts Council for selecting our 2025 Peace and Harmony through Poetry and Music project as a MicroGrant Success. Special thanks to our sponsors—Nova Marketing Group, Triple J Canada, Sureway Press, CPAC—and Canadian poets Katherine L. Gordon and D.C. Reid for their generous support. Peace and Harmony through Poetry and Music (May–September 30, 2025) resulted in the creation of over 30 original works. More songs and videos can be viewed here.
In 2020, I led Poetry in Translation: East Meets West seminars, receiving excellent feedback from participants and audiences. In 2021, my bilingual anthology Mirrors and Windows, featuring 59 poets translated between Chinese and English, was published by Guernica Editions and selected by CBC as one of 45 Canadian poetry collections to watch. These initiatives demonstrated how poetry translation can foster meaningful cross-cultural connections.
Building on this experience, I launched the 2026 project Borderless: Translating Across Divides to Foster Dialogue and Harmony. This intercultural initiative brings together Chinese- and English-speaking poets, translators, and readers to explore how poetry can bridge linguistic and cultural divides. Through collaborative workshops, participants translate and discuss selected poems, gaining deeper understanding of each other’s languages, traditions, and perspectives. The project will culminate in a bilingual anthology celebrating poetry’s power to connect communities.
I have already received strong support from previous project sponsors, including poets DC Reid and Katherine L. Gordon, Chen Jie (President, Triple J Tax), and Zelko Odorcic (President, Nova Marketing Group Inc.). Leveraging my role as Ontario Representative for the League of Canadian Poets and my past collaborations, I have established a strong network of potential participants.
Since Mirrors and Windows, I have continued translating works by over forty Chinese and Canadian poets—including Armand Garnet Ruffo, Alice Major, Molly Peacock, Richard Greene, Micheline Maylor, Yvonne Blomer, Rayanne Haines, David Stones, Kyeren Regehr, Lorna Crozier, Kate Rogers, Bruce Hunter, Bänoo Zan, Yan Li, Yen Ai-Lin, Luofu, and Yang Lian， Yuan Fan, Wang Zi Liang—many of which have been published in renowned literary media. I plan to invite additional poets, particularly those based in Mississauga. Together, their poems will foster dialogue, share knowledge, and cultivate collective wisdom across cultures.
As this project is non-profit, I plan to apply for grants to support it, though funding is increasingly difficult to secure. Nevertheless, I aim to complete the project by the end of 2026.
More updates will unfold as the project develops.
BTW, I would also like to celebrate that our 2025 Peace and Harmony through Poetry and Music project has been selected as a MicroGrant Success. Thank you to everyone who contributed to making that project meaningful and memorable.
We thank our sponsors: Nova Marketing Group, Triple J Canada, Sureway Press, CPAC and Canadian poets Katherine L. Gordon and D.C. Reid.
This Thanksgiving day we want to thank Nova Marketing Group, Triple J Canada, Sureway Press, poets Katherine L. Gordon and D.C. Reid and Mississauga Arts Council for sponsoring Poetry and Music project. Although this project is completed, Anna Yin continues to write more lyrics. Here we share some of her new songs and news.
This Thanksgiving I wrote this lyrics to remember Jane Goodall.
Anna Yin made the video to summarize the Poetry and Music project with heartfelt thanks to all sponsors for making this possible: Nova Marketing Group, Triple J Canada, Sureway Press, poets Katherine L. Gordon and D.C. Reid, and above all, the Mississauga Arts Council with RAMA Gaming Centre through the Mississauga Charitable Gaming Association. #poetry #music #projects #peace #harmony
Liu Yang’s review of Anna Yin’s translation book What We Do Not Know was published in Cuba. (page 9-14)
Sept 6 – Open Mic at Cineplex Junxion, Erin Mills Town Centre
Sept 13 – Book Fair Central Library, Mississauga (Book exhibition)
Sept 26 – Stratford (Poetry for Health and Harmony)
Sept 27 – Peel Art Gallery, Brampton (Haiku Workshop with Anna Yin)
A Chinese Nightingale with new recorded version, Walking with the Star with three versions, two in English, one live music, one recorded in Studio and one beautiful Chinese version by musicians from Taiwan’s Poetry Factor: 唤醒 and other two works by 詩歌工廠: 《雪之夢》and 化妆舞会.
We tried a few poems with music at MAC studio. Here is one of the videos Anna Yin made. Thanks Mississauga Arts Council. Check our other samples.
This Poetry and Music Project is proudly supported by our sponsors: Nova Marketing Group, Triple J Canada, Sureway Press, Mississauga Arts Council , and Canadian poets Katherine L. Gordon and D.C. Reid. We extend our heartfelt thanks to all of them!
We’re excited to be working on our Peace and Harmony Through Poetry and Music project. Our goal is to share messages of peace with communities through radio broadcasts, YouTube, and live performances.
Our first try of Midnight’s Mystery is on HOWL – CIUT 89.5FM June Open Mic, A Chinese Nightingale and Short Song from Breaking into Blossom were aired on HOWL July Open Mic.
The Seeking Heart (Anna Yin, Ming Li and Wendy Zhu), A Chinese Nightingale & Midnight’s Mystery (Anna & Mark Harry) at Open Mic Cineplex Junxion at Erin Mills Town Centre on July 5, 2025
The Seeking Heart, Midnight’s Mystery and Some Trees Come to me are on World Poetry Cafe Radio on July 10, 2025
My Accent, A Chinese Nightingale, Some Trees Come to Me showcased at Chinese and Canadian Poetry Symposium in Scarborough on July 27, 2025
We will share new piece: Walking with Star, My Accent, Poetry and Music, There Must Be Something & Beautiful Hope in Aug
Aug 6, Amphitheatre Unplugged (8-9pm) Celebration Square, Mississauga)
Check the whole Poetry and Music project. We thank our sponsors: Nova Marketing Group, Triple J Canada, Sureway Press, Mississauga Arts Council and Canadian Poets: Katherine L. Gordon & DC Reid.
Thanks Frontenac House. Now Breaking into Blossom is ready for pre-ordering… We hope in the coming National Poetry month, you can receive it as a perfect poetry gift!. #books #poetry #publishing
Here is a poet who finds authority in endurance. With a deepening craft, Anna Yin confronts bereavement, repression, displacement, and the complexities of love in poems that are heartfelt and crystalline. –Richard Greene:
Anna Yin’s poems ‘breathe in two languages,’ creating a lovely tension between immediacy and distance that feels as though two points on a globe have been connected by a flight path. Her imagery is deeply sensual, compelling yet delicate. Her lines hover in our minds like the dream that “finds his own key, unlocks the door and comes inside.” —Alice Major
From Molly Peacock:
In her gorgeous book, Breaking into Blossom, Anna Yin’s poetry is like the interior of the abalone shell she depicts, “emerald… just shining.” Almost anything or anyone in this volume can break unexpectedly into blossom, including the poems themselves, often concluding with unanticipated discoveries. The book undulates with observations and the animated sur-reality of all kinds of exchanges, from an interview with a painter to the poet’s father’s late life words to a desperate woman stepping on a Forget-me-not. “The career of flowers differs from us only in inaudibleness,” Emily Dickinson wrote to her cousins, and Yin’s buoyant inspirations from poets across time, Li Po to Wallace Stevens, Akhmatova to Dickinson herself, give voice to subtly noticed feelings and thoughts. Anna Yin is fast becoming a Canadian treasure.
