In conversation with Chen Yuhong

SH: Readers in Taiwan know you as a poet-translator of the works of contemporary Anglophone poets into Chinese, Carol Ann Duffy, Louise Glück, and, most recently, Alice Oswald, to name a few. How did you choose the poets you want to translate?

I was first introduced to English poetry at university, but as you know, the curriculum at Taiwan’s foreign language departments doesn’t really cover modern poetry. But I was trained quite well in classical Chinese poetry. After moving to Vancouver in the eighties, I came across Margaret Atwood’s poems by accident. I’d only known her as a novelist! As I read her work, I kept thinking how I could recreate her poetry in Chinese. But it wasn’t until I read Carol Ann Duffy’s work that I began to think seriously about translating English poetry into Chinese.

That’s interesting. Why is that? Is it the strong feminist voice in her work?

Many people think that’s the case. It’s true that Duffy’s work is described as highly political and feminist, but actually, it was the gentle voice in her collection Rapture that caught my attention. To me, love and compassion are the essence of all creative work. When poets write about ‘love’, family love or relationships, I believe that is when they show their true passions for poetry and humanity. That is what I found inspiring in Duffy’s Rapture: how every poem is an opportunity to explore a very focused, centralised theme in the metres, words and forms of her choice, as though she was composing a symphony. That was a very ...