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Home > Translation > The World Bookshelf > Books > Narrative Poem

Narrative Poem

Narrative Poem, Yang Lian’s most personal work to date, is built around a series of family photographs, the first of which was taken on the day when he was born, on 22 February 1955, and the last of which dates from the time he spent undergoing ‘re-education through labour’ – and digging graves – during the mid-1970s. The poetry ranges backward and forward in time, covering his childhood and youth, his first period of exile in New Zealand, and his subsequent adventures and travels in and around Europe and elsewhere. In ‘this unseen structure written by a ghost’ Yang Lian weaves together lived experience with meditations on time, consciousness, history, language, memory and desire, in a search for new/old ways of speaking, thinking and living.

Narrative Poem, or (Xushishi), was published in China in 2011, and this bilingual edition presents the Chinese text alongside Brian Holton’s masterly translation of a technically complex work of great beauty, The book also includes ‘Family Tradition’, Yang Lian’s first ever preface to his own work, and ‘Ghost Composer/Ghost Translator’, a translator’s afterword by Brian Holton.

Author

Yang Lian

Yang Lian

Books

Narrative Poem

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), Concentric Circles (2005), Lee Valley Poems (2009) and Narrative Poem (2017). He was awarded the International Nonino Prize in 2012.

Translator

Brian Holton

Brian Holton

Books

Narrative Poem

Brian Holton studied Chinese at Edinburgh and Durham universities. He has also taught at both establishments, as well as at Newcastle University, where he was the first director of the Translating & Interpreting programme; after that he spent nine years teaching translation in Hong Kong.

He has published many translations of Chinese literature into English and into his native Scots, as well as articles and essays on translation. Beginning in 1994, he has translated several books by the poet Yang Lian.

Published by

Bloodaxe Books, 2017
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Narrative Poem, Yang Lian’s most personal work to date, is built around a series of family photographs, the first of which was taken on the day when he was born, on 22 February 1955, and the last of which dates from the time he spent undergoing ‘re-education through labour’ – and digging graves – during the mid-1970s. The poetry ranges backward and forward in time, covering his childhood and youth, his first period of exile in New Zealand, and his subsequent adventures and travels in and around Europe and elsewhere. In ‘this unseen structure written by a ghost’ Yang Lian weaves together lived experience with meditations on time, consciousness, history, language, memory and desire, in a search for new/old ways of speaking, thinking and living.

Narrative Poem, or (Xushishi), was published in China in 2011, and this bilingual edition presents the Chinese text alongside Brian Holton’s masterly translation of a technically complex work of great beauty, The book also includes ‘Family Tradition’, Yang Lian’s first ever preface to his own work, and ‘Ghost Composer/Ghost Translator’, a translator’s afterword by Brian Holton.

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