New From Slapering Hol Press: The Meridian Series of Contemporary Chinese Poets

Slapering Hol Press Editors Susana H. Case, Mervyn Taylor, and Margo Taft Stever are pleased to announce that Slapering Hol Press, the small press imprint of the Hudson Valley Writers Center, recently published four volumes of translations of Chinese poems, organized and funded by Poetry Construction Literary Magazine of China and directed by poet Wang Jiaxin. These four poets are well known in China but are currently unknown in the United States. The mission of Slapering Hol Press is to advance the national and international conversation of poetry and poetics and to provide opportunities for emerging poets. 

Wang Jiaxin, Director of the Meridian Series of Contemporary Poets, who put this project together, is widely recognized as one of the most influential Chinese poets in the 20th and early 21st centuries. John Crespi, Director of Asian Studies at Colgate University, has stated: “Wang Jiaxin has exerted a far-reaching influence over contemporary Chinese poetry not just as a poet but also for his role as critic and translator. Wang’s poetic voice stands out for the gravity, clarity, and resolve with which it explores the individual’s relation to history, destiny, cultural inheritance, and humanity." He has authored over forty books, including collections of poetry, critical essays, and translations. 

The four volumes, authors, and translators are as follows:

• Snow Room, by Zhang Shuguang, translated by Kate Costello

• From Here to Here, by Lan Lan, translated by Diana Shi and George O’Connell

• Full Moon and Withered Lotus, by Quan Zi, translated by Jill Zheng

• Spider Economics, by Huan Jiyun, translated by Weijia Pan

Visit the Slapering Hol Press bookstore.

Praise for the Translations:

 For From Here to Here:

In this marvelous collection of selected poems, Lan Lan’s imagistic acuity and lyric compression emerge as she repeatedly draws the extraordinary out of the ordinary: “You ruminate / as insects dart from emptiness / toward a lamp. // Damselfly, red tiger moth, emerald scarab / tink against the glass.” Beautifully translated by Diana Shi and George O’Connell, Lan Lan’s poetry is a profound lamp that thrillingly draws the unanticipated into the light. —Arthur Sze, author of Into the Hush

This beautifully translated selection of work by a preeminent Chinese poet brings to English-language readers a writer of original eye, mind, tongue, sensibility, and heart. Lan Lan’s poems delve into the daily, her own life, and broader realms of culture and history, unearthing—as a farmer might unearth potatoes—resonance, meaning, witness, courage, griefs. On each page of this book, images and language continually unwrap new surprises; bass notes too deep to parse are audibly felt. Speaking pulse-beat to pulse-beat, moving from strength to strength, Lan Lan’s work brings this moment’s poetry to this moment’s world. —Jane Hirshfield, author of The Asking: New and Selected Poems

For Snow Room:

Zhang Shuguang’s poetry is a world unto its own: solid, elegant, and uncorroded by time. It’s as he states in “Prophecy,” in fifty years “I will be old and weak … / but my poems will still be young, they will be recited / like the sound of rain falling on grass.” This collection is full of evocative and resonant lines. It is one of the highest achievements of contemporary Chinese poetry. —Ha Jin, National Book Award-winning author, Professor at Boston University

As a poet, Zhang Shuguang is an explorer of the interior. Before he got involved with the avant-garde poetry scene, he was buried under Harbin’s gray winters. He built his own self-sufficient world from Harbin’s wind, snow, and long periods of quiet reading. It wasn’t solitude that set him on his path, but he came to the poetry scene with this level of understanding: “I fervently believe that a poem is always the fruit of memory, even if it describes the scene unfolding before my eyes.” —Cheng Guangwei, Critic, Professor at Renmin University of China

Zhang Shuguang has created a profound, introspective, slow-paced narrative tempered with grief that has set a standard for Chinese poetry since the 1990s. Related to this is an aesthetic spirit that combines individuality and lyricism, which was an important development for poetics at that time. From a broader perspective, Zhang Shuguang offers a model for the maturation of contemporary poetry. —Zhang Qinghua, Critic, Professor at Beijing Normal University

For Spider Economics:

Jiyun Huang’s poetry narrates the complexities of contemporary China in a set of socioeconomic parables layered with meanings. Through seemingly disconnected juxtapositions, he reorganizes a disordered world with astonishing clarity. His poems serve as a key to understanding Chinese reality and history. —Geng Zhanchun, poet, literary critic, professor

Jiyun Huang is a poet of deep and singular insight into Chinese culture and contemporary life. His poems embrace vivid, multifaceted experiences, broadening the scope of poetry while offering wise, intellectually engaging observations in lines that both stimulate and delight. —Wang Jiaxin, poet, professor, author of Darkening Mirror and At the Same Time

Jiyun Huang’s poetry confronts the absurdities of reality head-on. Intellectually rich and written with a calm, seasoned hand, it delves deeply into our times and reaches a poetic height by bearing witness to history. —Bai Hua, poet, professor

For Full Moon and Withered Lotus:

Quan Zi lives by the renowned West Lake in Hangzhou, China. The landscape and images in his poetry not only carry the profound essence and niceties of the millennia-old civilization but also work as “junctures for self-elevation.” While Buddhist influence is evident in his writing, he retains the power of skepticism and self-questioning. What he pursues is not superficial perfection, but rather a vision that penetrates through time—“the crystalline purity that must be preserved intact through excruciating pain.” I deeply admire Quan Zi’s poetry.

—Wang Jiaxin, poet, professor, and author of Darkening Mirror and At the Same Time

Amidst the polyphony of contemporary Chinese poetry, Quan Zi’s uniqueness lies in maintaining contemplations on the essence of things while excavating poetic meaning, presenting them through unadorned language. This grants his work a marble-like sense of toughness and simplicity in texture. —Zhang Shuguang, poet, professor, and author of Snow Room

Quan Zi is undoubtedly one of China’s outstanding contemporary poets. Long residing to the south of the Yangtze River, he creates a distinctive style of works that radiate subtle yet critical humanity, inspiring a cohort of like-minded poets. —Jiang Xue, critic, and author of The Han Orchard