The Chengdu-Leeds Poetry Exchange is approaching...

We're counting down the days till Lines of Transport: The Chengdu-Leeds Poetry Exchange kicks off April. In anticipation of this event, which will bring twenty of China's leading poets -- including Xi Chuan, Wang Jiaxin, Jidi Majia, Bai Hua, and others -- together with eight Leeds-affiliated poets including UK poet laureate Simon Armitage, we will be posting English translations of the participating Chinese poets' works over the next three weeks.

To produce these translations we've harnessed the expertise of Leeds' community of Chinese-speaking literature and translation enthusiasts. Over the past few months literary translator and Leeds Creative Fellow Austin Woerner has worked with Chinese MA students from the School of English and the Centre for Translation Studies to create English translations of these poems that strive to capture their nuances as experienced by native Chinese-speaking readers. Every poem is co-translated by Woerner and one Leeds student, though they reflect the input of all the students who have contributed to the lively conversations they've sparked during weekly meetings of the Leeds Poetry Translation Lab.

Our first offering is two poems by Bai Hua. Bai Hua is one of China's leading contemporary poets and a 2025-26 Cheney Fellow at University of Leeds; Lines of Transport grew out of conversations between Bai Hua and Leeds Vice-Chancellor Hai-Sui Yu -- who is himself a published poet and will attend the event -- during Bai Hua's visit to Leeds in June 2025.

'Northern Heart of England' is the first of a suite of poems that Bai Hua wrote during his stay in Leeds. 'Mirror Image' was written in 2015 as a response to Simon Armitage's poem 'Evening'. We think that in their spirit of literary crosspollination and the sense they convey of a special connection between this eminent Chinese poet and Yorkshire's literary landscape, they are the perfect way to kick off this month's offerings.