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July/ August 2016: Poetry Translation Competition

This summer we're focusing on our third Bai Meigui Translation Competition, and bringing you the competition poems, chosen by our judges Eleanor Goodman, Heather Inwood, and Canaan Morse.

The judges have chosen a diverse selection of poems, and the first prize will be awarded to the person judged to have provided the best translation of all three poems overall. The prize is a full bursary (worth £490) to the ‘Translate in the City‘ summer school at City University, London, in July 2017. In addition, the winning translation will be published in Stand magazine in 2017, alongside the winner of our 2nd Bai Meigui Competition, Luisetta Mudie, in a special issue on new writing from China.

The competition is free to enter, and is open to anyone, from any country, with an interest in Chinese-English translation. You can find the poems here. To find out more details, please see our Competition page.

The deadline is August 20th, so get translating soon!

In the meantime, you can read some fascinating articles by our three judges.

Here's a great interview from the Los Angeles Review of Books with Eleanor Goodman, on the poetry scene in China.

Canaan Morse has a moving post about contemporary Chinese poetry on the Metre Maids poetry blog.

And here's Heather Inwood on 'Poetry for the People? Modern Chinese Poetry in the Age of the Internet', from Chinese Literature Today.

Hopefully this will whet your appetite either to get translating, or to look forward to reading the winning translations in Stand magazine!