Yang Lian's Anniversary Snow wins the Sarah Maguire Prize for Poetry in Translation

 

The inaugural Sarah Maguire Prize for Poetry in Translation, which recognises the best book of poetry by a living poet from Africa, Asia, Latin America or the Middle East published in an English translation, was awarded last Thursday 25th March. The prize is an endeavour of the Poetry Translation Centre and is in memory of its founder, the late Sarah Maguire, who I knew for a few years before her untimely death and who was a brilliant poet in her own right as well as a champion of poetry from parts of the world often under-recognised in English translation. 

Out of a fascinatingly diverse field, the award went to the collection Anniversary Snow by Yang Lian, translated from Chinese by Brian Holton with further translations from WN Herbert, L. Leigh, Liang Lizhen, Pascale Petit, Fiona Sampson, George Szirtes and Joshua Weiner. Anniversary Snow is published by Shearsman Books and you can find it on their website here: https://www.shearsman.com/store/Yang-Lian-Anniversary-Snow-p140803770  

The panel of judges commented: "The book is grounded in the historical roots of Chinese culture, poetry and art, but goes far beyond it, reinterpreting with poise and intelligence the very essence of our existence, from the changing landscape that surrounds us, the appeal of the natural world and the inner beauty of language, exemplifying its political force and its political teachings." 

The PTC website has several excellent articles regarding the prize but I particularly recommend this fascinating and touching article by the winning poet Yang Lian: https://www.poetrytranslation.org/articles/where-did-anniversary-snow-fall

I'm delighted to be able to share a poem from Anniversary Snow. It appears below first in the original Chinese and then in its English translation. 

三，诗学探讨——另一个嵌入的声音

不能真 是不是美的错? 想象一件河底撒开的衬衣

浸进柏林秋夜的黑
想象那双眼睛呛满水 水呛满母亲

谁说死不是湿淋淋的和声? 河底的小窗亮着那演奏 河底 一个不停跃下的词

不停找到漏下的呜咽 叶子向下而伤口向上

房子向下 品尝的雪意向上 舌尖 钩住的毁灭是否远远不够?

想象一个滚落的自我 呛满历史的黑水 滚落如卵石

没别的时间除了抽缩的肺

没别的语法除了剥开生命那件衬衣 说 死侧身人形的茫茫

再淤积是否仍然不够?

     沉溺之诗里只有正在到来的词

摸进这儿 他奋力追赶自己的河底

母亲飘散的白逆着美的方向 成为它 拓展噩耗 谁没目睹这首诗急急赶来

粉碎
辉煌如

我们的美学?

3. Poetic Inquiry − Another Embedded Voice

can’t be real is that beauty’s fault?
imagine a shirt spread out on the riverbed

steeping in the black of a Berlin night
imagine two eyes water-choked mother choking on water

who says death isn’t a drenched harmony?
a little window on the riverbed lights up the show riverbed a word that never stops leaping downwards

never stops finding leaked-out sobs leaves go down and wounds go up

houses down enjoyment of imminent snow goes up tongue tip is hooked ruin not enough by far?

imagine a self plunging down drowning in history’s black water plunging like a pebble

there’s no time other than a contraction of the lungs

there’s no grammar other than a shirt that strips life away say death’s immeasurable side-on human shape

is filling up with sediment again still not enough?
in self-indulgent poetry there are only newly-arrived words

touch in here he does all he can to pursue his own river bed to become it

mother’s vaporizing white travels in the opposite direction to beauty spreads the worst of news no one saw this poem coming so quickly

shattering
dazzling as

our aesthetic?

(from Anniversary Snow by Yang Lian, published by Shearsman Books)