XI CHUAN with PAUL MANFREDI at Seattle Public Central Library

• paulmanfredi
• 4 years ago
• Categories: Contemporary poetry
• Tags: contemporary Chinese poetry, Xi Chuan

http://www.elliottbaybook.com/node/events/jan12/xi

Co-presented with the WASHINGTON CENTER FOR THE BOOK AT THE SEATTLE PUBLIC LIBRARY. A welcome Seattle return is made this evening by one of the foremost poets at work in China today, Xi Chuan. He read with Zhou Zan this past September at the Seattle Asian Art Museum as part of a U.S. tour for an anthology of contemporary Chinese poetry, Push Open the Window (Copper Canyon Press). Later in spring 2012, New Directions will publish the first major collection of his to appear in English, Notes on the Mosquito: Selected Poems, translated by Lucas Klein. A chapbook which would include some of this work, Yours Truly & Other Poems (Tinfish), may be on hand for this evening. “In 1988, when he was twenty-five, Xi Chuan and some friends launched an unofficial literary journal, Tendency. At the time he was translating Ezra Pound and Tomas Tranströmer, Czeslaw Milosz and Jorge Luise Borges, and his own writing suggests a corresponding sophistication and aesthetic range.” – Robert Hass, The Believer. Xi Chuan lives in Beijing, where he teaches classical Chinese literature at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. His awards include the Modern Chinese Poetry Award, the Lu Xun Prize, and the Zhuang Zhongwen Prize for Literature. With Xi Chuan this evening will be Pacific Lutheran University professor Paul Manfredi. This should be thoroughly engaging, as those who attended his September reading can attest. Free admission is on a first-come, first-serve basis. The Seattle Public Central Library is at 1000 Fourth Avenue (between Madison and Spring). For more information, please call Elliott Bay at (206) 624-6600, The Seattle Public Library at (206) 386-4636, or see www.spl.org.