Festival of Hope 1 / 30 April 2020

Selected best Chinese poems and translations: Guo Jinniu, Yang Lian, Zhai Yongming, Zhao Lihong

Around Mang Ke, Yang Lian and Tang Xiaodu, the three original founders of the magazine, the magazine brought all important Chinese poets together, keeping the great energy of creative thinking and writings even though the difficulties have been huge always, the “Survivors” became a main concept of Chinese poetry after the magazine named itself, it keeps “Unofficial” and “High cultural quality” as its one nature. It is the most important stage of Chinese poets to share their true works today.

Here are selected best Chinese poems from Mainland China, as well as the best translations both from the international languages into Chinese and the other way around.

Yang Lian - A Sunflower Seed's Lines of Negation and At Tranströmer's Grave

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Guo Jinniu - Gone Home On Paper

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Guo Jinniu - Do Cooly in Foreign Provinces

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Zhai Yongming - Interlinear Space A Prelude

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Zhai Yongming - In Springtime

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Zhao Lihong - Overlap

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ABOUT POETS

Yang Lian, a Chinese poet, was born in Switzerland, grew up in China and now lives in London. He published 15 volumes of poetry, 2 volumes of prose, and many essays. His work has been translated into more 30 languages, and his representative works including YI, Where the Sea Stands Still; Concentric Circles; Riding Pisces: Poems from Five Collections; Lee Valley Poems, Narrative Poem, Anniversary Snow...etc. His works have been reviewed as "like MacDiarmid meets Rilke with Samurai sword drawn!", "one of the most representative voices of Chinese literature". Among other awards, Yang Lian was awarded 2019 Premio Sulmona” in Italy; 2018 NordSud International Prize for Literature, Italy, The 2018 Janus Pannonius International Poetry Grand in Hungary. 2017, Narrative Poem was selected as a recommended translation by Poetry book Society in UK, as well as won the English PEN Award. 2016, he won the Pacific International Poetry Prize in Taiwan; 2014, the International Capri Prize; 2012, Nonino International Literature Prize. He has been elected a board member of PEN International PEN in 2008 and 2011. Yang Lian was a DAAD fellow in Berlin 1991--1992 and a fellow of Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin 2012 – 2013. He was elected a board of PEN International at 2008 and 2011; 2013, he invited to become a member of The Norwegian Academy for Literature and Freedom of Expression and been a distinguished professor and writer in residency in Shantou University in China since 2014.

Guo Jinniu, from Xishui, Hubei Province,now lives in Longhua, Shenzhen.Had studied in Deng Yiguang Studio. Occasionally, his poetry and fictions are published and awarded. He participated in the 46th Rotterdam International Poetry Festival in the Netherlands and the Berlin World Cultural Palace (HKW) "100 YEARS OF NOW" in 2015. In 2018, he participated in the Ninth "Youth Review" poetry club held by 《Shikan》of Chinese Writers Association. He has published the collection of poems "Return to hometown on Paper" (published by Shanghai East China Normal University Press), the English edition of the collection of poems "Huge Singular Number" (published by Shearsman Books, UK), and "Watch Out When Writing Poetry" (Australian Herald Press).

Zhai Yongming, born in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, graduated from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, then worked as a physics institute engineer until 1986. She began publishing poetry in 1981. Traveling extensively throughout Europe, she also lived in the US for nearly two years, during which she toured the nation by car. Consistently ranked as one of the most intriguing and challenging contemporary Chinese poets, she’s received numerous awards for her work, including the Zhongkun International Poetry Prize, the Best Ten Women Poets of China Award, the Italian Ceppo Pistoia International Literary Prize, the 31 st Annual Northern California Book Awards and the Chinese Media Award. She was also invited to attend the San Francisco International Poetry Festival in the US in 2009. Among her many poetry collections are Woman; Above All Roses; The Collected Poems of Zhai Yongming; Call It All; Fourteen Plain Songs; and Interlinear Spaces. Her poetry has been translated into English, French, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, and German. She has also published six collections of essays and literary criticism. Ms. Zhai lives in Chengdu, where she owns and operates the art and literary bar, “White Nights”.

Zhao Lihong, born in Shanghai in 1952, is a poet, proser and calligrapher, the director of China Writers Association, vice-president of the shanghai Writers Association and the publisher of the monthly Shanghai Literature. He holds a degree in Chinses literature from East China Normal University where he is a professorin modern literature and creative writing. He also lectures at shanghai Jiao Tong University. He won the Golden Key of Smederevo prize for poetry in 2013, and received the Mihai Eminescu International Poetry Award for his work in 2019. Zhao has published more than 80 awardwinning books in poety, prose and jorunalism, and his works have been tranlated into English, French, German, Russian, Japaneses, Korean, Italian, Spanish, Bulgarian, Serbian, Romanian, Arabic, Farsi, ect.

Author

Survivors Poetry Magazine

Survivors Poetry Magazine is an online poetry magazine founded in 1988, and survived all the years until now. The finders of the magazine are Mang Ke, Yang Lian and Tang Xiaodu, they were among the very first very small group of poets when Contemporary Chinese poetry started at the end of 1970s. So it is a witness of the history of Contemporary Chinese poetry that writes millions of poems by thousands of poets every year. Our website is www.surpoetry.com