THE JOURNAL OF 21st Century Chinese Poetry 《廿一世纪中国诗歌》is an independent journal committed to showcasing the best of contemporary Chinese poetry. We exist to discover and celebrate poetry and the Chinese poets who write them with the largest possible Anglophone audience.

In the early twentieth century, The May Fourth Movement (1917-1921) launched an era where vernacular Chinese was for the first time accepted as a legitimate poetic voice. This was followed by an outpouring of verse written in 'plain speech' by people from all walks of life in contrast to the classical, elitist poetic forms of imperial China.

A century has now passed since these 'new' poetic voices emerged. Vernacular poetry has continued to blossom in poetry journals and in cyberspace.

The editor and translators at 21st Century Chinese Poetry are committed to translating poets from across China who would otherwise remain virtually unknown to Western audiences.

Please send all enquiries, suggestions and corrections regarding 21st Century Chinese Poetry to Meifu Wang at:

editor@modernchinesepoetry.com or pathsharer@hotmail.com.

Founder and Editor
Meifu Wang



A TASTE OF CONTEMPORARY CHINESE POETRY

From 2012 to 2015, our team worked with a group of Chinese poets in China to introduce contemporary Chinese poetry to the wider world. We translated the works of 66 contemporary Chinese poets into English and broadcast them on this website and in print (ISSN 2166-3688).

From 2018 to 2022, we further collaborated with China's Poetry Journal (诗刊) to bring a selection of their monthly publication to world-wide readers. Poetry Journal (Beijing, China）was founded in 1957, with an emphasis on the publication of contemporary Chinese poetry as well as classical poetry by living poets. It is the widest-circulated poetry journal in China.

Circulating more than sixty years, the journal has brought together and introduced a great number of poets, reflecting many of the sweeping changes that the country has witnessed over that period.

A REPOSE

Since summer of 2023, Meifu has turned her focus to her own poetry and to poetry from other parts of the world. Please continue to visit this website and read the poems we translated over the years. Meifu is also in the process of updating the old numbers of 21st Century Chinese Poetry (No.1 - No. 15) and add them to "POEMS 2000-2015" on this website.

You can read some of Meifu's poems here:
Dirt Road
Water Droplets
Song of Sleep
London Blues
To Melville
To Father
Dirge
Reading Baudelaire Into the Night
Sea Crag

POEM OF THE DAY     一天一首诗

IN SAINT MARIA'S HOSPITAL

• by Yao Feng


• From under the white bed sheet
• you turn to me and stretch out your hand,
• slender, withered,
• red cardamom on your fingernails
• like plum blossoms brightening up winter's twigs.
• These fingernails, these blossoms,
• you once and again clip away,
• and once and again allow them to bloom.
• They are the outermost bits of your body,
• yet always so clean, so vibrant,
• even in this place
• with all the chaos of a public hospital,
• situated in a chaotic country.
• I take your hand and feel the ripples of blood
• inside the brown-coloured veins,
• pulsing back and forth through your red finger tips.
• Remember, you said this in your book:
• We live in dying bodies,
• and fingernails are the last to decompose.


• Translated by Meifu Wang & Michael Soper

Originally written in Chinese; its English translation first appeared on this website and in 21st Century Chinese Poetry, No. 8 ; 《廿一世纪中国诗歌》第八辑 .    (Books are currently out of print, but their contents are being gradually added to this website.)

We encourage you to read this poem as an exercise of slow reading.

  

  

Yao Feng 姚风

b. 1958

Born in Beijing, Yao Feng received his doctorate degree in comparative literature from Fudan University in Shanghai, and later worked as a professor in the Department of Portuguese at the University of Macau. In addition to translating Portuguese poets into Chinese, he has also published several poetry collections in Chinese and in Portuguese, among them Writing on the Wings of the Wind, The Night Lies Down with Us, and Songs from Far Away. He has received several poetry awards, including the fourteenth annual Rougang Poetry Award (2004) and the Ordem Militar de Santiago de Espada medal from the Portuguese president (2006).

姚风，原名姚京明，诗人，翻译家。生于北京，后移居澳门，现任教于澳门大学葡文系。著有中葡文诗集《写在风的翅膀上》、《一条地平线，两种风景》、《瞬间的旅行》、《黑夜与我一起躺下》、《远方之歌》、《当鱼闭上眼睛》以及译著《葡萄牙现代诗选》、《澳门中葡诗歌选》、《安德拉德诗选》、《中国当代十诗人作品选》等十多部。曾获第十四届“柔刚诗歌奖”和葡萄牙总统颁授“圣地亚哥宝剑勋章”。

Read Yao Feng's poems: In Saint Maria's Hospital, and Vegetative Man.