Poetry Expo 25
/ 27 February 2025
First International Youth Poetry Festival — BRICS Special
Report by Zhao Si
Poetry Expo 25
The "First International Youth Poetry Festival - BRICS Special" hosted by the China Writers Association and the government of Zhejiang Province in July, 2024 stands as a pioneering achievement within the realm of poetry festivals of its kind in China. A total of 49 international poets and 23 Chinese poets with other local poets attended this grand event. Among the various activities of the festival, being the forum moderator, I orchestrate and implement a high-caliber professional dialogue with the theme of "Innovation in Poetry".
The project is part of the subthemes Re-imagining identity through poetry, Healing Narratives - Poetry, Mental Health and Collective Trauma.
Author
Zhao Si
Zhao Si, Ph.D. is a contemporary and avant-garde Chinese poetess, the author of 11 books of original poetry and others in re-song, including: White Crow (2005), Gold-in-Sand Picker (2005), Disappearing, Recalling (2016), Go to YeLang Kingdom (2023), The Truth Tree of Time & Selected Poems (2025, forthcoming), and English translation book In a Flash of Lightening (Canada, 2023), Spanish translation book OTRA VES AYER (Buenos Aires, 2024), Slovak translation book Zmiznutia a návraty (2018), etc . Zhao Si's avant-garde role in the modernization and internationalization of Chinese poetry is complementary to her role in the translation and reception of a dozen books by world-leading poets, including: Tomaž Šalamun, Ted Huges, Vladimir Holan, Edmond Jabès, Yannis Ritsos, Tim Lilburn, and others. She is the recipient of several awards: "2014 Major Support Project" from China Writers Association, "A Mai Ni" Poetry Prize (2023), Polish Jerzego Sulimy-Kaminskiego Literature Medal (2020) and Alfred Kowalkowski Medal for translation (2023). She is a frequent guest in poetry festivals held in the world, in which are the 28th Vilenica ILF, the 53rd Struga Poetry Evenings, the 33rd Trois-Rivieres IPF, etc. Her latest international engagement is her participation as a featured author at the 48th Buenos Aires International Book Fair(2024). She lives in Beijing.
