In a Flash of Lightning

“Zhao Si is a poet of the infinite. She perceives enormous questions – the structure of the universe, the way in which time expands and contracts, and the realms of quantum physics and Hawking cosmos – in the same breath as she watches a beggar outside a subway station, a woman riding a bicycle through rain, or a homeless man with skin maladies. A keen observer of what exists right before her eyes, Zhao Si is constantly reminding her reader that the macrocosm exists in the microcosm, that what is visible in the finite is also to be perceived in the infinite if we are willing to open our eyes.” —from Bruce Meyer’s Introduction

“Zhao Si speaks to us as a woman from contemporary China, infusing her poetry with the great writers from her country’s past that shaped and shook up Western ways of knowing, but also bringing into her words and forms, modern European and North American sensibilities because of her wide-ranging erudition and her own award-winning translations of poets places far from Beijing. Her work is, at the same time, philosophical and sensual. She has the amazing gift to place the reader both in the here and now and in a future we have yet to imagine, except in her words.” —Lorna Crozier

Zhao Si is a Chinese poet, essayist, translator, poetics scholar, editor, and the author or translator of 15 books, including: White Crow (poems, 2005); Gold-in-Sand Picker (prose poems, 2005); Disappearing, Recalling: 2009–2014 New Selected Poems (2016), which won the “2014 Major Support Project” from the China Writers Association; Matchstick Man (U.S. publication, 2017), Zmiznutia a návraty (2018 – the first book of contemporary Chinese poetry published in Slovakia); translator of two poetry books by Tomaž Šalamun: Light-Blue-Pillow Tower (2014) and The Enormous Boiling Mouths of the Sun (2016); co-translator of Edmond Jabès: Complete Poems (2019); Selected Poems of Tim Lilburn (2020, realized by way of a translation grant from the Canada Council for the Arts); Czechia’s Vladimír Holan, A Night with Hamlet (2022, published with the long essay Orphic Poets); Crow (2023) and Season Songs (2023) by Ted Hughes; and selected works by Hart Crane (U.S.), Yannis Ritsos (Greece), Harold Bloom (U.S.), among others. Her poetry has also been translated into 16 languages. She lives in Beijing.

Bruce Meyer is author or editor of 73 books of poetry, short fiction, non-fiction, literary journalism, memoir, portrait photographs, textbooks, and reference books.

Xuan Yuan has translated works by Tomas Lieske, Mischa Andriessen, Maria Barnas, Christopher Merrill, and Anne Waldman (all of which have been published in China’s prestigious Contemporary International Poetry periodical) and the books Selected Poems of Patrick Lane (2021) and Anthology of Contemporary Dutch Poets (2022).

Tim Lilburn has published 12 books of poetry, and his work has been widely translated and anthologized.

Xia Kejun is a Chinese philosopher, art critic, and curator of contemporary art centred on the topics like Infra-mince Art, Infra-image, and Enchorial-topia. He has published 20 books.