An Exchange August 12–August 23
Programming in Beijing, Wubao, Nanjing, and Shanghai
The International Writing Program (IWP) sent a delegation of three writers (Jonathan Stalling, Jane Hirshfield, and Shin Yu Pai) to China for a twelve-day Lines & Spaces exchange, accompanied by IWP Director Christopher Merrill. The exchange was made possible by funding from the IWP's partners at the Chinese Poetry Research Institute of Peking University, the Beijing Zhongkun Investment Group, the Nanjing UNESCO City of Literature, and the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of State.
The exchange began with a Sino-American poetry dialogue at Peking University’s Chinese Poetry Research Institute, with the delegation engaging in conversation with their Chinese counterparts about poetry in the public and private spheres, the poet’s role in society, and how emerging technologies are transforming the relationship between poetry and the public. In addition to participating in seminars, poetry readings, and the ceremony wherein Ms. Hirshfield was awarded the Zhongkun International Poetry Prize, the delegation met with Public Affairs Officers at the U.S. Embassy for a lively roundtable and exchange of impressions and ideas.
The Sino-American poetry dialogue continued in the village of Wubao, in Shanxi Province, where the delegation gave a poetry reading and learned about several local traditions.
The delegation then traveled to Nanjing, where they met with representatives of the Nanjing and Seattle UNESCO Cities of Literature, forging stronger ties between these literary centers. In an in-person session at Nanjing Normal University, Professor Stalling commenced a 4-week hybrid class on the theme of English Jueju; the book artist Zhu Ying Chun demonstrated how he turns insect tracings into new works, and students were invited to try their own hands at the form.
The final stop was the U.S. Consulate in Shanghai. The delegation presented with Chinese poets from the Shanghai Writers' Association to an audience of literature enthusiasts, highlighting the capacity of poetry to bridge cultural divides and foster understanding across borders.
Delegation
Jane Hirshfield
Jane Hirshfield
is the author of ten collections of poetry, including The Asking: New and Selected Poems (2023); Ledger (2020); The Beauty (2015), longlisted for the National Book Award; Come, Thief (2011), a finalist for the PEN USA Poetry Award; and Given Sugar, Given Salt (2001), a finalist for the National Book Critics Award. Hirshfield is also the author of two collections of essays, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry (1997) and Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World (2015), and has edited and co-translated four books collecting the work of world poets from the past: The Ink Dark Moon: Poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu, Women of the Ancient Court of Japan (1990); Women in Praise of the Sacred: Forty-Three Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women (1994); Mirabai: Ecstatic Poems (2004); and The Heart of Haiku (2011).
Hirshfield’s work encompasses a large range of influences, drawing from the sciences as well as the world’s literary, intellectual, artistic, and spiritual traditions. Her first poem appeared in The Nation in 1973, winning what would the next year become the Discovery Award, shortly after she graduated from Princeton as a member of the university’s first graduating class to include women. She then put aside her writing for nearly eight years to study at the San Francisco Zen Center. “I felt that I’d never make much of a poet if I didn’t know more than I knew at that time about what it means to be a human being,” Hirshfield once said. “I don’t think poetry is based just on poetry; it is based on a thoroughly lived life.”
Shin Yu Pai
Shin Yu Pai is a poet, an essayist, a photographer and book artist, and a curator. She earned her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MA in museology from the University of Washington. Pai is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including Aux Arcs (2013), Adamantine (2010), Works on Paper (2008), and Sightings: Selected Works (2000–2005) (2007). Her work has appeared internationally, in publications in the United States, Japan, China, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and Canada.
Pai’s work frequently unfolds across different media to tell stories about history, landscape, and geography. Of the connection between photography and poetry, Pai says, “My visual work complements my writing in being another extension of the way in which I see and take in the world. I see them as very complementary vs. oppositional practices that help me to go to deeper places that I might not, if aided by only one medium.”
Jonathan Stalling
Jonathan Stalling is the Harold J. & Ruth Newman Chair of US-China Issues and Professor of International and Area Studies (and Affiliate Professor of English) as well as Co-Director of the Institute for US-China Issues, where he directs The Newman Prize for Chinese Literature, The Newman Prize for English Jueju, Chinese Literature Today, and the CLT book series (University of Oklahoma Press). He is also the founder and Curator of the Chinese Literature Translation Archive and an Affiliate Professor of English. Dr. Stalling specializes in Comparative US-China Culture, Literature, and Poetics as well as Chinese-English translation and interlanguage studies (and pedagogies). He teaches courses on various aspects of US-China cultural, literary, and linguistic studies. He is the author or editor of eight books: Poetics of Emptiness (Fordham), Grotto Heaven (Chax), Yingelishi: Sinophonic Poetry and Poetics (Counterpath) and Lost Wax: Translation through the Void, and he is the co-editor of The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry (Fordham), By The River: Contemporary Chinese Novellas (Oklahoma) and Contemporary Taiwanese Women Writers (Cambria). He is the translator of Winter Sun: Poety of Shi Zhi (1966-2005), which was a finalist for the National Translation Award. His opera Yingelishi (吟歌丽诗) was performed at Yunnan University in 2010, and a portion of a newly scored version was staged by Opera 180 in Kansas City in 2018. Stalling was the first non-Chinese Poet in Residence of Beijing University, and was also Poet in Residence of Hongcun (Huangshan, Anhui, China) in 2015 and of Lingshui Tan in 2019. Stalling’s interlanguage work was the subject of two TEDx Talks (TEDx Talk #1 and TEDx Talk #2), and exhibitions of his work can be found at poeticsofinvention.ou.edu. This work is the subject of a new book forthcoming from Hong Kong University Art Museum Press, entitled “Inter-Resonance: Chinese-English Art, Poetics, Linguistics."
Christopher Merrill
Christopher Merrill has published eight collections of poetry, including Watch Fire, for which he received the Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets; many edited volumes and translations; and six books of nonfiction, among them, Only the Nails Remain: Scenes from the Balkan Wars, Things of the Hidden God: Journey to the Holy Mountain, The Tree of the Doves: Ceremony, Expedition, War, and Self-Portrait with Dogwood. His writings have been translated into nearly forty languages; his journalism appears widely; his honors include a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres from the French government, numerous translation awards, and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial and Ingram Merrill Foundations. As director of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa since 2000, Merrill has conducted cultural diplomacy missions to more than fifty countries. He served on the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO from 2011-2018, and in April 2012 President Barack Obama appointed him to the National Council on the Humanities.