Contemporary poet Wang Jiaxin to read for Katonah Poetry Series

Wang Jiaxin, above, and below, his book of poetry, "Darkening Mirror" translated by Diana Shi and George O’Connell.

On Sunday, March 9, the Katonah Poetry Series and Katonah Village Library will present one of the most prolific writers in contemporary China, Wang Jiaxin. 

The reading will begin at 4 p.m. at the Katonah Village Library, located at 26 Bedford Road, Katonah, and will be followed by a brief Q&A. Tickets are $15 and will be available at the door.

Few Chinese poets who have come to prominence after the “Misty Poetry” phenomenon of the early  to mid-1980s have cast a longer shadow than Wang Jiaxin, according to program organizers.

“The Misty Poets of China crossed the boundaries of free speech that were imposed by their government,” the organizers said. “The word ‘Misty’ was used to describe their work because their messages of protest were often deeply embedded in metaphor.” Active until the Tiananmen Square student uprising in 1989, many were imprisoned. Others fled and live in exile. 

John Crespi, director of Asian Studies at Colgate University, has extolled Jiaxin’s work.

“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,” he said.

“Through his art, Jiaxin Wang transcends the dark experiences of history where so many poems reside. Reading his poetry and translations is both a learning experience and a literary pleasure,” added Ann van Buren of the Katonah Poetry Series.

The eminent poet, essayist, and translator and has published more than 40 books. His collection of poems in English is “Darkening Mirror” (Tebot Bach, 2017), translated by Diana Shi and George O’Connell, with a foreword by former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass. His poems have been published in “The American Poetry Review” and “The Kenyon Review,” and he has been a poet-in-residence at the Dutch Literary Foundation (Amsterdam, 2022) and at the the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa (2013). An esteemed translator of Yeats, Mandelstam, and especially of Paul Celan, he has also translated books by American poets Jean Valentine and Ilya Kaminsky into Chinese. He has won many domestic and international awards, including the inaugural Ai Qing Poetry Award (2023).

Jiaxin was a professor at Renmin University of China for many years. He now divides his time between New York and Beijing. He has led a translation workshop at the Hudson Valley Writers Center, lectured and read at Walt Whitman’s birthplace, and at a number of American and Canadian Universities.

The Katonah Poetry Series has been showcasing leading international poets for more than 50 years. The series continues May 4 with a reading by Mark Wunderlich.