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Trees Grow Lively on Snowy Fields
Poetry
Collaborative Translators: Stephen Haven , Jin Zhong , Li Yongyi , Wang Shouyi
This dual-language anthology (Mandarin face-to-face with English translations) includes work from nearly 50 years of mainland Chinese poetry, from the 1970s to the first decades of the twenty-first century. Without attempting to represent the range of any one school or period of Chinese poetry, the 99 poems in this volume include such Chinese Misty poets as Duo Duo, Mang Ke, and Gu Cheng, and span well beyond the Misty School to one poet—Zheng Min—of an earlier generation, and to many poets of later generations, including Mo Fei, Wang Jiaxin, Lan Lan, Yu Nu, Tang Danhong, Tong Wei, Li Yongyi, and Yang Jian. This book has its genesis in life-long friendships between the four translators of this volume, Stephen Haven, Jin Zhong, Li Yongyi, and Wang Shouyi—friendships first forged in the 1990s during Haven’s two Fulbright years in Beijing, when a group of Beijing poets began to invite him to their gatherings. During Li Yongyi’s and Wang Shouyi’s own Fulbright years in the United States, during Haven’s later travels to China, and finally via the web, these translations, many of which appeared in such journals as American Poetry Review, World Literature Today, North American Review, The Common, Manoa, and Consequence Magazine, came into being over a period of 30 years.
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Feb 20, 2022
"Trees Grow Lively on Snowy Fields is a generous collection of poems in translation selected from twelve major contemporary Chinese poets representing those voices that the Chinese literary world has considered influential over the last several decades. To read this anthology, therefore, is to circulate through the heart of current Chinese poetic styles..."
Read More at singaporeunbound.com
December 19, 2000 + December 14, 2002
“I first heard of the poet Mang Ke when I visited Heilongjiang University, in Harbin, China, in December 1990 at the invitation of Wang Shouyi, a poet and critic as well as Dean of Foreign Languages at that university.”
Read More at artfuldodge.com
Feb 20, 2022
In this video, three translators -- Stephen Haven, Wang Shouyi, and Jin Zhong -- read from their book "Trees Grow Lively on Snowy Fields: Poems from Contemporary China" (Twelve Winters Press, 2021). The book is a collection of 99 poems by 12 Chinese poets, translated by four translators (Li Yongyi was not able to participate in the event). The hardcover and paperback are dual-language editions with the Mandarin and English on facing pages. Nearly 30 people attended the worldwide event via Zoom, and there was a lively Q&A following the readings in both languages.
Listen on youtube.com
Other Translations
Stephen Haven
Poet, professor, memoirist, translator, and editor.