Bei Dao - Böcker

At the Sky's Edge combines in a single bilingual paperback volume two essential works by one of the world's finest contemporary poets. In his first retrospective volume of poetry in English, two of Bei Dao's previous booksForms of Distance (1994) and Landscape Over Zero (1996)are gathered together in one bilingual paperback edition. At The Sky's Edge: Poems 1991-1996 marks a pivotal point in the poet's oeuvre, presenting the increasingly lyrical, meditative poems written in the years following his banishment from China in 1989. Translated into twenty-five languages, Bei Dao's work has long been appreciated internationally, but is just recently gaining a larger audience in the US. At The Sky's Edge becomes Bei Dao's seventh book published by New Directions and is the first time Forms of Distance appears in a paperback edition. The translations of David Hinton, who was awarded the prestigious Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from The Academy of American Poets in 1997, capture both the musicality and density of the original Chinese. Quiet, spare, these are poems of paradox and possibility, of words carefully balanced, of a world on edge.

in the mirror there is always this momentthis moment leads to the door of rebirththe door opens to the seathe rose of time—Bei DaoThe Rose of Time: New & Selected Poems presents a glowing selection of poetry by contemporary China’s most celebrated poet, Bei Dao. From his earliest work, Bei Dao developed a wholly original poetic language composed of mysterious and arresting images tuned to a distinctive musical key. This collection spans Bei Dao’s entire writing life, from his first book to appear in English, The August Sleepwalker, published a year after the Tiananmen tragedy, to the increasingly interior and complex poems of Landscape Over Zero and Unlock, to new never-before-published work. This bilingual edition also includes a prefatory note by the poet, and a brief afterword by the editor Eliot Weinberger. A must-read book from a seminal poet who has been translated into over thirty languages.

A TIME MUST-READ BOOK OF 2024A 2024 NPR BOOK WE LOVEA NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF 2024LONGLISTED FOR THE 2025 GRIFFIN POETRY PRIZESidetracks, Bei Dao’s first new collection in almost fifteen years, is also the poet’s first long poem and his magnum opus—the artistic culmination of a lifetime devoted to the renewal and reinvention of language. “As a poet, I am always lost,” Bei Dao once said. Opening with a prologue of heavenly questions and followed by thirty-four cantos, Sidetracks travels forward and backward along the divergent paths of the poet’s wandering life—from his time as a Young Pioneer in Beijing, through the years of exile living in six countries, back to the rural construction site where he worked during the Cultural Revolution, to the “sunshine tablecloth” in his kitchen in Davis, California, and his emotional visit home after a thirteen-year separation (“the mother tongue has deepened my foreignness”). All the various currents of our times rush into his lifelines, reconfigured through the “vortex of experience” and the poet’s encounters with friends and strangers, artists and ghosts, as he moves from place to place, unable to return home. As the poet Michael Palmer has noted, “Bei Dao’s work, in its rapid transitions, abrupt juxtapositions, and frequent recurrence to open syntax evokes the un-speakability of the exile’s condition. It is a poetry of explosive convergences, of submersions and unfixed boundaries, ‘amid languages.’”

Forms of Distance is Bei Dao’s second bilingual collection since his enforced exile from China in 1989. Michael Hofmann described the first, Old Snow, as ‘the work of one of the great poets of our time’, and John Cayley wrote in the Times Literary Supplement that ‘in a sense he is the only contemporary Chinese poet who is knowable for the non-specialist … we can hear the maturing poetic voice of a highly talented, individual Chinese writer.’

Longlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize 2025A Time Book of the Year 2024A Financial Times Poetry Book of the Year 2024Sidetracks, Bei Dao's first new collection in fifteen years, is also his first long poem and undoubtedly his magnum opus - the artistic culmination of a lifetime devoted to the renewal and reinvention of language. 'As a poet, I am always lost,' he once declared. Opening Sidetracks with a prologue of heavenly questions and following on with thirty-four cantos, the poem travels forward and backward along the divergent paths of the poet's wandering life. From his time as a Young Pioneer in Beijing, the poem roves through the years of exile living in six countries, back to the rural construction site where he worked during the Cultural Revolution, to the 'sunshine tablecloth' in his kitchen in Davis, California, and his emotional visit home after a thirteen-year separation ('the mother tongue has deepened my foreignness'). The various currents of our times rush into his lifelines, reconfigured through the 'vortex of experience' and the poet's encounters with friends, strangers and with other artists living and dead. He moves from place to place unable to return home.As the poet Michael Palmer noted: 'Bei Dao's work, in its rapid transitions, abrupt juxtapositions and frequent recurrence to open syntax evokes the un-speakability of the exile's condition. It is a poetry of explosive convergences, of submersions and unfixed boundaries, "amid languages".'

Bei Dao är en av de främsta diktarna under tiden efter Mao, känd som ledande inom den grupp som kallas "de dunkla" poeterna. Nu publiceras ett urval av hans dikter i nyöversättning av Göran Sommardal.

This book is an anthology of the poems written by fourteen poets hailing from Albania, Egypt, Germany, Japan, Mexico, the United States, and the Great China regions of Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. The poets will assemble in Hong Kong in November 2009 in a gala celebration of poetry and recitation - International Poetry Nights in Hong Kong, the biggest and first such gathering in the territory's history. The poems, selected by the poets themselves, are published in their original languages as well as Chinese and English.

Following the convening of Hong Kong International Poetry Nights 2011, The World of Words is a collection of selected works by some of the most internationally acclaimed poets today. Included are the poems of Tanikawa Shuntaro (Japan), Paul Muldoon (Ireland), Tomaž Šalamun (Slovenia), Arkadii Dragomoshchenko (Russia), C. D. Wright (USA), María Baranda (Mexico), Régis Bonvicino (Brazil), Silke Scheuermann (Germany), Bejan Matur (Turkey), Vivek Narayanan (India) as well as leading Chinese poets such as Xi Chuan, Yu Jian, Yu Xiang, Ling Yu, Chen Ko Hua, Lo Chih Cheng, Tian Yuan, Yao Feng, Wong Leung Wo and Yip Fai. The collection makes a treasured anthology of the finest contemporary poetry in trilingual or bilingual presentation.

Edited by Gilbert Fong, Shelby Chan, Lucas Klein, and Bei Dao, The World of Words twenty-volume set is an extended edition of the single-volume The World of Words. It comprises twenty pocket off-prints encased in a fine paper box, each containing more selected works by one of the internationally renowned poets included in the single volume, accompanied by English and/or Chinese translations. The goal of The World of Words collection is to disseminate and make accessible the best of contemporary international poetry through high quality translations by outstanding translators. Each of the twenty volumes can be purchased separately.

Following the convening of International Poetry Nights in Hong Kong 2013, Islands or Continents is a collection of selected works by some of the most internationally acclaimed poets today. Included are the poems of Adonis (Syria), Aase Berg (Sweden), Conchitina Cruz (The Philippines), Menna Elfyn (Wales), Lee Seong-bok (South Korea), Tim Lilburn (Canada), Zeyar Lynn (Myanmar), Dunya Mikhail (Iraq), Peter Minter (Australia), Tomasz Ró?ycki (Poland), Olvido García Valdés (Spain), Jeffrey Yang (USA), Raúl Zurita (Chile) as well as leading Chinese poets such as Natalia Chan, Han Dong, Lan Lan, Un Sio San, and Ye Mimi. The collection makes a treasured anthology of the finest contemporary poetry in trilingual or bilingual presentation.

Edited by Bei Dao, Shelby Chan, Gilbert Fong, Lucas Klein, and Christopher Mattison, Islands or Continents box set is an extended edition of the single-volume Islands or Continents. It comprises eighteen pocket off-prints encased in a fine paper box, each containing more selected works by one of the internationally renowned poets included in the single volume, accompanied by English and/or Chinese translations. The goal of Islands or Continents collection is to disseminate and make accessible the best of contemporary international poetry through high quality translations by outstanding translators.

Following the enormous success of the 2009, 2011 and 2013 occasions of the International Poetry Nights in Hong Kong, the “International Poetry Nights in Hong Kong 2015” (IPNH K2015) will be held in November 2015. The Organizing Committee of IPNH K2015 will continue to accomplish the mission of making literature a more prominent part of daily life in Hong Kong, by organizing more literary activities such as this biennial event. IPNH K2015 brings together internationally renowned poets from different partsof the world to create opportunities for college and high-school students, as well as for local writers and the public to meet the invited poets through IPNH K2015 activities, broaden their horizon in the reading of world poetry, and be aspired by the writing of their local environment. IPNH K2015 also seeks to foster close collaboration with institutions of tertiary and secondary education, connecting higher education with the public at large for the sake of knowledge transfer.The theme of IPNH K2015 is “Poetry and Conflict,” which explores the multi-layered relationships between poetry and war. Poetry has been generally recognized as the highest form of language, while war inflicts the most pains on human history. IPNH K2015 invites world-acclaimed poets from war-troubled countries in the past such as the United States (Anne Waldman, Peter Cole), Japan (Tawada Yoko, Mizuta Noriko), South Korea (Kim Hye-soon), Macedonia (Nikola Madzirov), Catalonia (Gemma Gorga), Portugal (Fernando Pinto do Amaral), Burma (ko ko thett), Morroco (Mohammed Bennis), Mainland China (Wang Xiaoni), Taiwan (Chen Li), Hong Kong (Yin Jiang), and those of today such as Israel (Agi Mishol) and Palestine (Ghassan Zaqtan, Najwan Darwish). These poets, who engage their works with “war” as a topic, are going to exchange views and explore the many layers where equanimous poetry is able to play its role in the most violent events in human history, and in so doing, encourage writers and readers of war-free Hong Kong to reflect upon the local milieu in a global framework.

Following the enormous success of the 2009, 2011 and 2013 occasions of the International Poetry Nights in Hong Kong, the “International Poetry Nights in Hong Kong 2015” (IPNH K2015) will be held in November 2015. The Organizing Committee of IPNH K2015 will continue to accomplish the mission of making literature a more prominent part of daily life in Hong Kong, by organizing more literary activities such as this biennial event. IPNH K2015 brings together internationally renowned poets from different partsof the world to create opportunities for college and high-school students, as well as for local writers and the public to meet the invited poets through IPNH K2015 activities, broaden their horizon in the reading of world poetry, and be aspired by the writing of their local environment. IPNH K2015 also seeks to foster close collaboration with institutions of tertiary and secondary education, connecting higher education with the public at large for the sake of knowledge transfer.The theme of IPNH K2015 is “Poetry and Conflict,” which explores the multi-layered relationships between poetry and war. Poetry has been generally recognized as the highest form of language, while war inflicts the most pains on human history. IPNH K2015 invites world-acclaimed poets from war-troubled countries in the past such as the United States (Anne Waldman, Peter Cole), Japan (Tawada Yoko, Mizuta Noriko), South Korea (Kim Hye-soon), Macedonia (Nikola Madzirov), Catalonia (Gemma Gorga), Portugal (Fernando Pinto do Amaral), Burma (ko ko thett), Morroco (Mohammed Bennis), Mainland China (Wang Xiaoni), Taiwan (Chen Li), Hong Kong (Yin Jiang), and those of today such as Israel (Agi Mishol) and Palestine (Ghassan Zaqtan, Najwan Darwish). These poets, who engage their works with “war” as a topic, are going to exchange views and explore the many layers where equanimous poetry is able to play its role in the most violent events in human history, and in so doing, encourage writers and readers of war-free Hong Kong to reflect upon the local milieu in a global framework.

International Poetry Nights in Hong Kong (IPNHK) is an award-winning biennial poetry festival established by renowned contemporary Chinese poet Bei Dao. Since its debut in 2009 in Hong Kong, IPNHK has become the most influential series of international poetry events in the sinophone areas, delivered internationally acclaimed poets’ thoughts and ideas about poetry to contemporary China, and stimulated Chinese poets’ reflection upon their own conditions of reading world poetry. Following the enormous success of previous editions, IPNHK’s 2017 event is scheduled to happen between 22–26 November in Hong Kong, with the theme “Ancient Enmity”, and invites more than twenty poets and lyricists from different parts of the world to share and read their works, in the hope of encouraging exchange among poets and lyricists. Poets include Gabeba Baderoon (South Africa), Javier Bello (Chile), Chen Dongdong (China), Jérôme Game (France), Major Jackson (US), George Szirtes (UK), Anja Utler (Germany), Haris Vlavianos (Greece) and others. The IPNHK anthology includes selections of the most internationally acclaimed contemporary poetry by the invited poets, accompanied by unique Chinese and English translations in bilingual or trilingual formats.