How did the Chinese Communist Revolution impact the life of poetry in China? Stephen Haven—writer, professor, and visiting Fulbright lecturer in Chinese universities for 2 ½ years—will present a talk on the state of Chinese poetry in the years following the 1949 Communist Revolution, including ways that poetry changed following the 1978 Democracy Wall Movement in Beijing. Haven will illustrate his comments by reading from an anthology of contemporary Chinese poems he recently edited, Trees Grow Lively on Snowy Fields (Twelve Winters Press, 2021). Haven wrote the introduction to this nearly 300-page dual language (Mandarin and English) collection of contemporary poems, and along with Jin Zhong, Li Yongyi, and Wang Shouyi he served as a collaborative translator for the volume. Trees Grow Lively on Snowy Fields includes poetry by 12 contemporary Chinese poets: Duo Duo, Mang Ke, Lan Lan, Mo Fei, Tong Wei, Yu Nu, Yang Jian, Tang Danhong, Gu Cheng, Wang Jiaxin, Li Yongyi, and Zheng Min.

A December 2021 review of Trees Grow Lively on Snowy Fields, published in the New York City web-zine Singapore Unbound, is available here. Copies of the anthology will be available for sale following Haven’s discussion.

Stephen Haven’s The Flight from Meaning is forthcoming from London’s Eyewear Publishing in 2022. His other poetry collections include The Last Sacred Place in North America, Dust and Bread, and The Long Silence of the Mohawk Carpet Smokestacks. He is also editor of, and one of four collaborative translators for, the 2021 anthology Trees Grow Lively on Snowy Fields: Poems from Contemporary China (Twelve Winters Press). Haven is Core Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Please note that capacity for this event will be limited and masks are recommended.

Sponsored by the Friends of the Thomas Crane Public Library.