My friends--and comrade poets/translators:
Anna Yin's editorship of Mirrors and Windows (just published), an INTERNATIONAL anthology of poems that she has translated from English into Chinese and from Chinese into English is a landmark--an exquisitely rendered, intellectual/artistic touchstone--for the continued conversation between English (Canadian) poets and those of China that she has been singlehandedly enhancing (on the Canadian side) for at least a decade now.
Anna's Poundian contribution to our mutual enrichment is graced spectacularly by poet-publisher Michael Mirolla of Guernica Editions, who not only agreed to publish this significant volume, but has graced it with a memorably elegant, yet plain cover--like the moon-over-water that so besotted Li Po. Once again, Guernica has served notice that it is an international heavy-hitter.
We are so lucky to have this unprovincial press in our literary culture--just as we are lucky to have the pioneering, cosmopolitan sensibility of Anna Yin uniting Occident and Orient via East-West Poems in Translation (which is the subtitle).
Not to be political, I will say that I think this kind of outreach and intellectual community is urgently needed at a time when anti-Asian racism has reared its very ugly head and also at a time when Western vs. China/Russia rivalry has given rise to some pseudo-warmongering, particularly from the West.
But I don't stress that. I stress that this book is a fine achievement. Please consider ordering copies. AND let us extend this model to other translation anthologies of other Canadian 'multicultures.'
Blessings to Anna & Michael!
Triumphant creativity to us all!
--GEC
George Elliott Clarke
4th Poet Laureate of Toronto (2012-15)
7th Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada (2016-2017)
