Zheng Danyi’s poetry now available in English

January 18, 2006 Zheng Danyi (born 1963) is a prolific writer. Raised in rural southwest China, Zheng has been compared with Rilke, Dylan Thomas and Tsvetaeva. Esteemed translator J.P. Seaton considers him one of "the leading Chinese poets of this century" while critics in China have long regarded him as one of the finest lyrical poets. Zheng has won prizes in New York (First Line inaugural prize) and in China (one of the nation’s ten best poems in 1997, by Beijing Youth Daily). “What do Chinese readers hear in Zheng Danyi?” asks his translator. In response he writes: “I believe they hear a passionate, musical voice, and words that sound both strange and familiar. And they are likely to be surprised at the poetry within the most common vernacular expressions. After all, modern vernacular Chinese as a literary language is a fairly new phenomenon, formally adopted for poetry less than a hundred years ago, in around 1917.”

For more details, visit the website of Sixth Finger Press.