ContactOuyang Jianghe
Ouyang Jianghe is one of China's most prominent living poets, but unlike contemporaries such as Bei Dao, Duo Duo, and Yang Lian, he has rarely been translated into English. He is an influential art critic and president of the literary magazine Jintian; he lives in Beijing.
Chinese critics consider Ouyang's poetry to be some of the most challenging avant-garde verse written in China. His poems, which have the intricate, sculpted quality of fugues, are concerned with dissecting the layers of meaning which underlie everyday objects and notions like "doubled shadows."
I have been fortunate to have the chance to work closely with Ouyang, taking apart the subtleties of his poems line by line, character by character. I traveled to Beijing in May 2009 on a travel grant from the Jintian Literary Fund, where I lived and worked with Ouyang for several weeks; in September 2009 Ouyang and I did a joint residency at Vermont Studio Center as the first writer-translator pair to take part in VSC’s Literature in Translation Program.
Doubled Shadows: Selected Poems of Ouyang Jianghe is forthcoming from Zephyr Press.
- "The Burning Kite" and "Mother, Kitchen," plus translator's note, in Poetry
- "Crossing the Square at Dusk" and "Who is Gone, and Who Remains" in Kenyon Review Online
- "Glass Factory", "Dinner", "Handgun", and "Our Hunger, Our Sleep" (published in 2010 issue of Zoland Poetry)
Interview
- Interview with Ouyang Jianghe in Kenyon Review Online