Zhai Yongming, one of the leading poets of China, was born and raised in Chengdu, where she runs a poetry series at her White Nights bar. As part of the Cultural Revolution, she was sent way to work in the countryside, an experience that informed her early writing. She returned to Chengdu to become a poet and rose to prominence with the publication of her twenty-poem cycle Woman, which articulated a female point of view in China’s largely patriarchal society. Her poetry is available in English in The Changing Room and in The Silk Dragon II: Translations of Chinese Poetry, translated by Arthur Sze (Copper Canyon, 2024).
WORKS THAT HAVE APPEARED IN NARRATIVE:
- The Loneliness of Fireworks, poetry, in Winter 2024
