James Shea
Photo by Tre Hiu Hung
Bio
James Shea is the author of two books of poetry, Star in the Eye, included in the Poetry Society of America’s New American Poets series, and The Lost Novel, named as a “Book of 2015” by the Volta. His poems have appeared in various journals and anthologies, including Boston Review, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, jubilat, and The New Census: An Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry. His translations of Japanese and Chinese poetry have appeared in Circumference, Gin’yu, the Image Hunter (the Chinese University Press), and the Iowa Review. A former Fulbright Scholar, he teaches in the Department of Humanities and Creative Writing at Hong Kong Baptist University, where he is the associate director of the International Writers’ Workshop.
Project Description
To support (in collaboration with Dorothy Tse) the translation from the Chinese of And So Moving a Stone You Look at Festival Lights along the Street & Uncollected Poems by Yam Gong. Yam Gong (b. 1949)—the pen name of Lau Yee-ching—is a self-taught, working-class poet whose poetry fuses philosophy with the everyday. He began working at the age of 13 as a delivery boy, and today lives on a small island in Hong Kong and commutes by ferry to his long-time job as a maintenance worker. Though he is considered one of Hong Kong's major poets, he has only published two collections. This project comprises 100 poems from his most recent collection in 2010, as well as a sampling of unpublished poems.
This fellowship will allow me to spend significant time translating the work of Yam Gong, a contemporary poet who deserves to be better known outside of Hong Kong. His use of Cantonese, for instance, extends the expressive possibilities of contemporary Chinese poetry, and this project, co-translated with Hong Kong writer Dorothy Tse, focuses especially on rendering Yam Gong’s colloquial language for English-language readers. Yam Gong’s poetry is also notable for its mixture of lexical registers, including slang, Chinese idioms, bits of prayer, classical poetry, references to fighting moves from martial arts films, and English song lyrics. Translating his work can enrich English-language poetry and world literature at large, and it will expand the meanings of Sinophone literature. This project will animate my own writing as well, as I learn from the pleasures and challenges of translating Yam Gong’s work.