Bai Hua 柏桦

Born in 1956 in Chongqing, Bai Hua is a professor of Chinese in the School of Humanities at Southwest Jiaotong University (SWJTU) in Chengdu, Sichuan. He has published numerous poetry collections and academic works and is the recipient of the Anne Kao Poetry Prize, the Shanghai Literature Poetry Award, the Rougang Poetry Prize, the 5th Red Rock Essay Prize, the Yangcheng Evening News Huadi Literary Award, the 9th Sichuan Literary Award, the inaugural Dongwu Literary Award, and Poetry Periodical's 2024 Chen Zi'ang Poetry Prize. His first full-length translation of selected poems, Wind Says, in Fiona Sze-Lorrain's translation, was out from Zephyr Press in 2012. In 2025 he was awarded a Cheney Fellowship from the University of Leeds and is serving as Visiting Research Fellow with Leeds’ School of Languages, Cultures, and Societies from June 2025 to June 2027.

Reflecting on his own practice of poetry, Bai Hua writes:

"Poetry takes form naturally, like the rhythms of life itself, in breathing. Once words have created a certain atmosphere, they blur and dissolve into a breath, a voice. At such moments poetry attempts a serendipitous transcendence, thereby approaching the purity of nature. But it is difficult for even the greatest poetry to reach it, so the joy it brings us is limited, tinged with regret. In this sense poetry can't be written; it's just a form we resort to when we have no other choice."

Bai Hua was Author of the Month for the Leeds Centre for New Chinese Writing in June 2025.