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Darkness Spoken is the most complete volume of Ingeborg Bachmann’s poetry in English and German. Considered one of the premiere poets of her generation, Bachmann’s various awards include the Georg Büchner Prize, the Berlin Critics Prize, the Bremen Award, and the Austrian State Prize for literature. Darkness Spoken collects her two celebrated books of poetry, as well as the early and late poems not collected in book form. First published by Zephyr Press in 2006, the volume also contains 129 poems released from Bachmann’s archives that had never been translated before. Twenty-five of them also appeared in German for the first time. Continued research by Peter Fikins on Bachmann’s writing since 2006 as well as his current work on Bachmann’s biography (forthcoming, Yale University Press), has afforded him the opportunity to draw even closer to Bachmann’s poems and appreciate more deeply their context and meaning. For this second revised edition, roughly a quarter of the poems collected here have benefitted from revisions in word choice for the purposes of greater clarity, better syntax or rhythm, or in a few instances, corrections in punctuation and of interpretive errors. A few lacunae in the German have also been corrected, allowing this volume to remain the most complete edition of Bachmann’s poetry.

"Subtle and compelling, Bai Hua is among the best in contemporary Chinese poetry."--David Der-wei Wang, Harvard University"Fish"Unfathomable, the fish can't singswimming from silence to silenceIt needs things, it needs to speakbut it stares blindly at a stoneThe strength of endurance is too preciseSenility urges it to walk the road of kindnessWhat is it? Image of a peopleor an act of soundless immersion?The face of grievance veers toward shadowthe silence of death toward errorBorn as metaphor to clarify a fact: the throat where ambiguous pain beginsConsidered the central literary figure of the post-Obscure (post-"Misty") poetry movement during the 1980s, Bai Hua was born in Chongqing, China, in 1956. After graduating from Guangzhou Foreign Language Institute, he taught at various universities before working as an independent writer. His first collection of poems, Expression (1988), found immediate critical acclaim. A highly demanding writer, Bai Hua has a small but selective poetic output: between the mid-'80s and 2007 Bai Hua wrote fewer than one hundred poems, most of which continue to command a large audience across China. After a silence of more than a decade, he began writing again in 2007. This bilingual selection is a comprehensive overview of Bai Hua's writing career.Fiona Sze-Lorrain writes and translates in French, English, and Chinese. Her recent work includes Water the Moon (Marick Press, 2010). Co-director of Vif Éditions and one of the editors at Cerise Press, she is also a zheng concertist.

"Zhang Er's poems lead us to another world, dive into the blank of writing and shriek in despair. The eloquence in her poems is a voice debating our time."--Bei DaoZephyr's second collection of Zhang Er's poetry, this bilingual edition includes a selection of work from three of her most recent Chinese collections ranging from the late 1990s to the present day. Zhang Er was born in Beijing, China, and moved to the United States in 1986. She is the author of multiple books in Chinese and English, including Verses On Bird (Zephyr Press, 2004). Er teaches at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington.

Shang Qin was born in Sichuan, China, in 1930, but has lived in Taiwan since the late 1940s, when he, like so many others, fled the mainland after the "fall of China." The author of four volumes of poetry and an artist of significant accomplishment, he is among the first poets in Taiwan to have expressed a significant interest in surrealism and is, without question, one of the finest poets writing in Chinese on either side of the Formosa Strait.

A companion volume to Lo Fu's book-length poem Driftwood (Zephyr Press, 2006), Stone Cell compiles writing from every decade of his celebrated literary career."Beyond Logic"Do you know why rivers cling to their banks?Because they only have one way of dyingEven with two banks, the ferries have no choiceWe'd prefer an incendiary bombTo smelling the scorched stench of the setting sunAs long as I live I'm destined to swallow those awful sonnetsTurning to the last page--Still those damned sonnetsThis is a cemetery where a single voice is buriedIt echoes in the heart, an eagle circles the brinkIf it's a thorn, let it pierce blood with loveIf it's a poppy, let a smile blossom on the lipsThe poet's philosophy of lifeis an unwillingness to dieLo Fu is the author of twelve volumes of poetry. He has won all the major literary awards in Taiwan, including the China Times Literary Award and the National Literary Award. Zephyr's previous book by Lo Fu, Driftwood, was noted as one of the "poetry books of the year" on the Poetry Foundation's blog Harriet.John Balcom has translated more than a dozen books into English from Chinese. He is an associate professor and head of the Chinese program at the Monterey Institute. Balcom's recent publications include Taiwan's Indigenous Writers: An Anthology of Stories, Essays, and Poems, which received the 2006 Northern California Book Award.

One of the most provocative and cosmopolitan poets writing in Chinese today.Hsia Yü's frank and innovative treatment of gender and sexuality heralds the beginning of a much-awaited Chinese écriture féminine. As critics have noted, Hsia Yü may well be the first woman poet in Taiwan to have written about love and romance in a way that breaks radically from the conventions and constraints of traditional Chinese women's poetry. At a time when scholars in both Taiwan and North America are anxious to find a candidate to fill the long-vacant post of "Chinese feminist poet," Hsia Yü's feminism remains somewhat problematic, in that the poet herself has not only strongly resisted the label "feminist" but has insisted that her poetry is far more concerned with exploring the pleasures of the flesh and the pleasures of the text."L'Empire à la Fin de la Decadence"For Qiu Jin, Qing dynasty revolutionary martyrA waltz not without its possibilities of mutual destructionLike your revolutionI discover I've appeared in the guise of a manLike youDancing toward the nadirNadir ad infinitumTo the endless verge of topplingThe empire at the end of its decadenceBut I am merely an androgyneIn a gloomy salonReleasing my splendorMy loud and sonorous masculinityBorn in Taiwan but now dividing her time between Paris and Taipei, Hsia Yü makes a living as a song lyricist and translator. She is the author of four volumes of poetry, of which the most recent is Salsa (1999). She first came to prominence in the mid-1980s with the appearance of Beiwanglu, or Memoranda (1983), a self-published collection of poetry whose brassy and iconoclastic tone struck a deeply sympathetic cord in Taiwan's younger readers. Besides her popularity in Taiwan, Bei Ling devoted ten pages of an issue of his journal Tendencies to her poems, and Michelle Yeh and Goeran Malmqvist's anthology of Taiwan poetry, forthcoming from Columbia, will contain translations of 27 of Hsia Yu's poems.Steve Bradbury translates Chinese literature and teaches American and Children's Litera

"... a highly developed range that's very beautiful."--Leslie ScalapinoZhang Er grasps for the spiritual through objects of the mundane, quietly detailing the wonder and desperation that courses through human lives. In these poems, the eye watches the eye so that no facet of our existence remains unexplored. "Zhang Er belongs to the generation beyond lament or anger over the hardship endured by Chinese intellectuals, from overthrown rebellion to construction, from confusion to clarity, from darkness to light (ambiguity to clarity). She walks out of suffering and uncertainty, discovers the loveliness, preciousness of life and self-respect . . ."--(New World Poetry Bimonthly)From the poem "Verses on Bird" The river is moving. The blackbird must be flying.From classical fugues to Romanticism, this effortproducedSchubert. When storms attack, the nightjar's crySwells. The noble revolution will require greatSacrifice, yet do not ask me to capture this process onthe blackAnd white keys, nor to switch to another tone.I could not find two birds with identical pitch.With nothing to induce it, innocence makes me walkInto rushing water as if I were brave. Empty space is great, but nothingRepeats itself there. Whether I doOr whether I don't; from each, the sum of the piano's voice will rise.Not to be doubted: bird writes poem, one vowel at a time.Zhang Er was born in Beijing, China and moved to the United States in 1986. Her poetry, nonfiction and essays have appeared in publications throughout the world, and she is the author of multiple books in Chinese and in English translation. She has also participated in projects sponsored by the New York Council for the Arts and by the Minetta Brook Foundation.

Born in Ankara in 1961, Zafer Senocak has lived in Germany since 1970. Over the years, he has become a leading voice in the German discussions on multiculturalism and national identity. His volume of essays Atlas of the Tropical Germany is currently included on the American Association of University Professors list of books to further our understanding of issues surrounding 9/11.Between 1996 and 2000, Senocak was writer-in-residence at four US universities and was a featured author at the 2007 PEN World Festival in New York City. Door Languages contains material from four of Senocak's recent German collections."His Story"when there were no secret partswriting was devised on a woman's bodyno part left undescribedmen and their dirty fingersmixed up one character with the otheruntil the letters couldn't be readthey had never gotten around to readingthey became doubters of scriptlooking for the lost languageburned all books short of their own bodyout of the ashes fashioned their dream dameveiled it deep blackare illiterates stillElizabeth Oehlkers Wright's translations of contemporary German poets have been featured in numerous journals. She was the winner of Agni's William J. Arrowsmith Translation Award, and she has received fellowships from the NEA, the American Literary Translators Association, and the University of Arkansas Fulbright College. A selection of her translations of Zafer Senocak appeared in the PIP Anthology of World Literature of the 20th Century (Green Integer) and in the 2007 Zoland Poetry annual.

Duo Duo was recently named the 2010 laureate of the $50,000 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the only international literary prize from the United States for which poets, playwrights, and novelists are given equal consideration. The Neustadt is widely considered to be the most prestigious international prize after the Nobel Prize for Literature and is often referred to as the "American Nobel" because of its record of twenty-seven laureates, candidates, or jurors who in the past thirty-nine years have been awarded Nobels following their involvement with the Neustadt. Duo Duo is the twenty-first Neustadt laureate and the first Chinese author to win the prize.Chinese poet Mai Mang, who currently teaches Chinese literature at Connecticut College, served on the Neustadt Prize jury and nominated Duo Duo for the award. He notes that "Duo Duo is a great lone traveler crossing borders of nation, language, and history, as well as a resolute seer of some of the most basic, universal human values that have often been shadowed in our troubled modern time: creativity, nature, love, dreams, and wishful thinking."Robert Con Davis-Undiano, WLT's executive director, adds that "Duo Duo is foremost among a group of first-rate Chinese poets who deserve serious attention and recognition in the West."Duo Duo (Li Shizheng) was born in Beijing in 1951. He started writing poetry in the early 1970s as a youth during the isolated midnight hours of the Cultural Revolution, and much of his early writing critiqued the Cultural Revolution from an insider's point of view in a highly sophisticated, original style.

Duo Duo began to write poetry in the early 1970s when the Cultural Revolution was still in full swing. He was obliged to write clandestinely, never imagining he would have readers. He continued to write throughout the 1980s, publishing in samizdat publications, and then more openly as the authorities relaxed their grip. Duo Duo left China for a reading tour of England June 4th 1989, the morning after the Tiananmen massacre that he had witnessed.Duo Duo's poetic vision embraces a historical and political vision that is much more diverse, more global than that circumscribed by the confines of the last third of China's twentieth century. The context of China, Duo Duo's lived experience, is necessarily present in the poet's imaginary, but it is diffused in a world-view that embraces all of modern humanity's dilemmas, our increasing separation from nature, and our alienation from one another. The exile, like the hybrid and other "in between" subjects, writes of China with the benefit of critical distance, but also writes with an exceptional perspective of wherever he finds himself.Before leaving China, Duo Duo worked as a journalist. His writing has been widely translated and published throughout the world, including two small selections of his work--in English--published in the UK and Canada. Generally associated with the other menglong (ambiguist) poets, such as Bei Dao and Yang Lian. Duo Duo currently lives and teaches in the Netherlands.Gregory Lee currently lives in France and teaches at l'Université Jean Moulin Lyon III. He has also taught at the Universities of Cambridge, London, Chicago and Hong Kong. His translations of Duo Duo and other Chinese poets have appeared in numerous publications, including Fissures: Chinese Writing Today (Zephyr Press), and Abandoned Wine (Wellsweep Press).Also available Fissures: Chinese Writing TodayTP $14.95, 0-939010-59-3 - CUSA

In this bilingual collection (Turkish and English), Zafer Senocak returns to the language of his childhood even as he writes from Germany, his home since he was eleven. Readers will find explorations of migration, exile, memory, identity, and the fine line between reason and belief - themes that have appeared throughout his career as a leading Turkish-German intellectual, but which gain new shades of meaning as he articulates them in his first language. Some poems reference mystical Islam - exploring both hidden and evident aspects of the world, the real and the dream-like - as well as Turkish poetic traditions. These poems movingly give voice to what his translator Kristin Dickinson calls "moments of cross-cultural contact and entanglement." The book will be a fascinating companion to his earlier collection, Door Languages, published by Zephyr Press in 2008, translated from German by Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright.

Three celebrated poets illuminate the complexity of life in Haiti and its diaspora in the 21st century, particularly for women, in this exceptional and unprecedented trilingual collection. In Évelyne Trouillot’s sensual poems about love and yearning, she asks repeatedly “in what language should I speak to you”? Marie-Célie Agnant addresses poverty, pain, death, but also the pleasures of passion. Maggy De Coster’s concise and personal poems explore the world — its nature, light, wind — and, sometimes, political themes. Together, these poems navigate between an impulse to “capture gently these moments of light” (De Coster) and the very different insistence that we see how “pain sits at ground level / at times charging like a beast” (Agnant). The original poems in French and Haitian Kreyòl appear facing the English translations by Danielle LeGros Georges. Agnant is the 2023 Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate.

The South Korean poet and playwright explores loneliness, alienation, and flashes of togetherness, creating a world that his translator calls “overcast, yet playful.”Yoo writes poems that invite readers to reflect upon daily sorrows, while also illuminating single moments full of strange and arresting images that suggest the passage of time—a hardened piece of bread, a train about to arrive, a crumpled piece of paper. This debut collection in English chronicles contemporary life in a minor key where loneliness and existential ghosts thread the pieces. But Yoo’s title also points to his fascination with language, and how each day offers chances to understand new vocabularies and new meanings—of words, of living.

Derek Chung’s poems capture the East-meets-West synergy of Hong Kong’s cosmopolitan culture, while tracking the city’s myriad transformations over the past two decades. Though his poems bear the influence of Anglophone poets such as Elizabeth Bishop and Seamus Heaney, Hong Kong is at the heart of his work. Writing through the lens of a father, restaurant-goer, dreamer, flaneur, protester, and more, Chung captures a city in motion—and the joy, loss, and heartbreak that comes with loving Hong Kong.