Jade Ladder

This anthology is the record of a revolution in Chinese poetry. As the Cultural Revolution gave way to the post-Mao era - years of political turmoil, economic boom and the return of Hong Kong - the present period has been one of extraordinary and deeply problematic growth. Chinese poets, driven by alienation, trauma and exile, have responded with one of the most thorough and exciting experiments in world poetry. Jade Ladder shows authoritatively for the first time in English the diversity of Chinese poetry as it renegotiates its relationship with Western modernist and postmodernist poetry, and re-engages with its Classical heritage. Misty, post-Misty, Fourth Generation; publication in samizdat, publication in exile, publication on the internet - in a nation of billions, it sometimes seems that there are a million ways to write poetry. This selection provides a concise series of perspectives on a proliferating scene. It focusses on key figures and key poems. It moves beyond the lyric to showcase an astonishing diversity of genres including narrative poetry, neo-Classical writing, the sequence, experimental poetry and the long poem. Through detailed introductions, it examines how contemporary poetry grew from both the fertile Classical tradition and the stony ground of the Communist period, only to rewrite that tradition, and resist that regime. Jade Ladder is the most comprehensive single volume guide to what has been happening and what is happening now in a culture of undeniably global significance. It is indispensable reading for anyone with an interest in the future not just of China, but of poetry.

The jade ladder itself is an image of the link between heaven and earth, translatable as the imagination. The atmosphere given off by the anthology is a heartening one, despite the grimness of some of the material, since what we read and hear testifies to the necessities of the imaginative life as embodied in poetry, whatever the political and economic climate., This fascinating gathering of new and old voices is sure to please not only fans of Chinese culture but all who appreciate great poetry.

W.N. Herbert is Professor of Poetry & Creative Writing at Newcastle University. He writes in two tongues, English and Scots, and has co-translated poetry from a diverse range of other languages. Yang Lian is was one of the original Misty Poets who reacted against the strictures of the Cultural Revolution, and has lived in exile since 1989. He has an international reputation as one of China's leading contemporary poets. Brian Holton has taught Chinese language and literature at Edinburgh, Durham and Newcastle Universities and at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He is the principal English-language translator of Yang Lian's poetry, and the only currently-publishing Chinese-Scots translator in the world. Qin Xiaoyu is a writer and editor, recognised as one of the most original and inuential of the younger critics now writing in China.