Wang Jiaxin 王家新

Photo credit: Hu Min

Wang Jiaxin is a Chinese poet, essayist, and translator and has published more than forty books. His work has had an important influence on Chinese poetry and has been translated into many languages. His first collection of poems in English was Darkening Mirror (Tebot Bach, 2017), translated by Diana Shi and George O’Connell, with a foreword by former US Poet Laureate Robert Hass. His poems have been published in The American Poetry Review, American Poets, The Kenyon Review, Washington Square Review, and The Hopkins Review, and he has been a poet-in-residence at the Dutch Literary Foundation (Amsterdam, 2022) and at the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa (2013). An esteemed translator of Yeats, Mandelstam, and especially of Paul Celan, he has won many domestic and international awards. John Crespi, Director of Asian Studies at Colgate University, writes: “Wang Jiaxin has exerted a far-reaching influence over contemporary Chinese poetry not just as a poet but also for his role as a critic and translator. Wang’s poetic voice stands out for the gravity, clarity, and resolve with which it explores the individual’s relation to history, destiny, cultural inheritance, and humanity.” (Chinese Poets Since 1949)

Wang Jiaxin was born in Hubei province and graduated from Wuhan University. Hewas a professor at Renmin University in China for years; he now spends most of his time in New York. His second collection of poems in English, At the Same Time, translated by John Balcom, was published by Arrowsmith Press in autumn 2025.