Empty Chairs: Selected Poems

Liu Xia

ISBN 10: 1555977251 / ISBN 13: 9781555977252

Published by Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, 2015

About this Item

8vo, 118 pp., Translated from the Chinese by Ming Di & Jennifer Stern; foreword by Herta Muller; introduction by Liao Yiwu.

Seller Inventory # 119127

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Empty Chairs: Selected Poems
• Publisher: Graywolf Press, Minneapolis
• Publication Date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1555977251
• ISBN 13: 9781555977252
• Binding: softcover
• Edition: 1st.
• Condition: Fine copy
• Seller catalogs:
  • Poetry

About this title

Synopsis

The first publication of the poetry of Liu Xia, wife of the imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize recipient Liu Xiaobo

I didn't have a chance
to say a word before you became
a character in the news,
everyone looking up to you
as I was worn down
at the edge of the crowd
just smoking
and watching the sky.

A new myth, maybe, was forming
there, but the sun was so bright
I couldn't see it.
―from "June 2nd, 1989 (for Xiaobo)"

Empty Chairs presents the poetry of Liu Xia for the first time freely in both English translation and in the Chinese original. Selected from thirty years of her work, and including some of her haunting photography, this book creates a portrait of a life lived under duress, a voice in danger of being silenced, and a spirit that is shaken but so far indomitable. Liu Xia's poems are potent, acute moments of inquiry that peel back to expose the fraught complexity of an interior world. They are felt and insightful, colored through with political constraints even as they seep beyond those constraints and toward love.

About the Author

Liu Xia is a Chinese poet and artist. English translations of her poetry by Ming Di and Jennifer Stern have been published by PEN America, Chinese PEN, the BBC, The Guardian, the Margins for the Asian American Writers' Workshop, Poetry, the Poetry Society of America, and Words Without Borders. Liu Xia's photographs have appeared in galleries throughout the world. She has been living under strict house arrest since her husband, the poet and activist Liu Xiaobo, was imprisoned in 2009 for "inciting subversion of state power" and then received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010.