Reciprocal Translation Project : 6 Chinese and 6 Us Poets Translate Each Other

The Reciprocal Translation Project showcases the work of twelve leading innovators in poetry, six writing in English and six in Chinese. These poets combine many methods of translation to open up new possibilities for trans-cultural literature. Each poem is first literally translated by a bilingual translator and then poetically translated by three poets of the other language. Instead of a single translation, The Reciprocal Translation Project gives readers one literal translation and three poetic translations for each piece, acting in concert and conversation. In this collection, one reads these twelve writers as both poets and translators, as they blur the boundaries between conventional categories.

James Sherry is the author of 14 books of poetry and theory and one of the leading proponents of both Language Writing and Environmental Poetics. His many books include Selfie: Poetry, Social Change & Ecological Connection (Palgrave MacMillan, 2023), The Oligarch: Rewriting Machiavelli’ s The Prince for Our Time (Palgrave MacMillan, 2018), Entangled Bank, Oops! Environmental Poetics,/i> and He is the editor Roof Books, a seminal literary publisher, associated with virtually every innovative strategy in English language writing of the past 40 years, publishing over 200 titles of seminal works of language writing, flarf, conceptual poetry, new narrative and environmental poetry and poetics. He started the Segue Foundation in 1977 that has produced over 10,000 events in New York.