Narrative Poem - Softcover

Lian, Yang

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1780373511 ISBN 13: 9781780373515

Publisher: Bloodaxe Books, 2017

Synopsis

A new collection of poems from influential and innovative Chinese poet Yang Lian, who has lived in exile since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989. His most personal work to date draws on family photographs from the 1950s through to the 1970s, when he was sent to be ""re-educated through labour"", digging graves in rural China. He now divides his time between London and Berlin. Chinese-English bilingual edition.

About this title

About the Author

Yang Lian was one of the original Misty Poets who reacted against the strictures of the Cultural Revolution. Born in Switzerland, the son of a diplomat, he grew up in Beijing and began writing when he was sent to the countryside in the 1970s. On his return he joined the influential literary magazine Jintian (Today). His work was criticised in China in 1983 and formally banned in 1989 when he organised memorial services for the dead of Tiananmen while in New Zealand. He was a Chinese poet in exile from 1989 to 1995, finally settling in London in 1997. Translations of his poetry include four collections with Bloodaxe, Where the Sea Stands Still (1999), a Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation, Concentric Circles (2005), Lee Valley Poems (2009) and Narrative Poem (2017), as well as his long poem Yi (Green Integer, USA, 2002) and Riding Pisces: Poems from Five Collections (Shearsman, 2008), a compilation of earlier work. He is co-editor with W.N. Herbert of Jade Ladder: Contemporary Chinese Poetry (Bloodaxe Books, 2012), and was awarded the International Nonino Prize in 2012.

Review

'Yang Lian is one of the most astonishing poets I've read for years. He has a westernist, modernist sensibility allied with an ancient Chinese, almost shamanistic one. He can both excite and frighten you - like MacDiarmid meets Rilke with Samurai sword drawn!' - W.N. Herbert, Scotsman; 'Yang Lian distinguishes himself in representing the pain of life caught in between historic eras...a new version of an old issue for world literature as well as Chinese literature is proposed: how to continue writing, relying on individual rather than enforced communal inspiration.' - Allen Ginsberg; 'It wouldn't surprise me if he became a future Nobel Laureate. His style is one of extraordinary grandeur and ambition...a monumental drive, a sensuous strength and intellectual clarity.' - David Morley, Stand --.

The influential and controversial poetry of London-based, Swiss-born Chinese poet Yang Lian led to years of exile and adventure, frames of which are captured here in what the poet calls 'the most comprehensive expression so far of my thinking and my poetics.' Drawn from old family photographs from his youth, the poems in this dual-text collection are lush with distinct, shapely images that sit like leaves on a tree, gathering and expressing the energy of a single, connected vitality. --World Literature Today

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1780373511
• ISBN 13: 9781780373515
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272