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.

Founder and Editor
Meifu Wang



A NEW SEASON OF POETRY

From 2019 to 2022, our editor and translator team worked in partnership with China's Poetry Journal (诗刊) to bring contemporary Chinese poetry to our 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.





YET ANOTHER SEASON OF POETRY

Since summer of 2022, 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 look through the poems we translated over the years,

or read some of Meifu's poems:
Dirt Road
Water Droplets
Sea Crags
To Melville
To Father
Dirge
Reading Baudelaire Into the Night

We are in the process of updating and re-printing the old numbers of 21st Century Chinese Poetry (No.1 - No. 15). Please stay tuned.

POEM OF THE DAY     一天一首诗

SNOWED IN

• by Ye Yu


• It's hard to fathom, one cannot dream it,
• how bitterly cold it was when Anna Akhmatova stood in the queue to visit the prison camp,
• or the Siberian air that finally knocked out Osip Mandelstam.
• Russian snow, to be sure like all snow,
• is made of hexagonal crystals.
• Words are snow too, sheets and sheets of them,
• accumulated over centuries to find me on this dreary winter day.
• I open a book, breathing onto each page over a field of cold air,
• reading about the blizzard that blocked out daylight,
• blocked out doors, and blocked out the dawn of human civilization.
• "It's easier for an era to end than for a squirrel to fall.”
• Occasionally, in places smaller than a squirrel’s den,
• I look for the sharpness that was once in my native tongue,
• but all has withered. There are no nibs in the air,
• no nibs in our souls for icy crystals to form.


• Translated by Meifu Wang, Michael Soper & Johan Ramaekers

First appeared on this website and simultaneously in China via WeChat （微信） by our partner — China's Poetry Journal （诗刊）

  

Ye Yu 夜鱼（张红）

b. 1969

Ye Yu was born in Yancheng, Jiangsu Province, and later moved with her family to Wuhan, Hubei Province. She has published three poetry books: Broken Phrases, The Seventh-Second Narrative and The Old Twilight. She works as an editor for a poetry magazine in Hubei Province.

夜鱼，笔名张红，祖籍江苏东台，后举家迁居湖北武汉，2007年开始诗歌创作。著有诗集《碎词》《第七秒叙事》《老辰光》。作品散见《诗刊》《钟山》《长江文艺》《长江丛刊》等几十种纯文学刊物。并入选各种诗歌年选。现为湖北某省刊诗歌编辑。