The European Medal
of Poetry and Art
Zhao Si
Vice President
Dr. Zhao Si (original name, Zhao Zhifang), poet, essayist, translator, poetics scholar. Translation editor in Poetry Periodical, the leading poetry magazine charged by China Writers Association. Vice-President of European Medal of Poetry and Art - HOMER（& Chief editor of “Homer Medal Laureates Series”）
Zhao Si, Ph.D., is a contemporary and avant-garde Chinese poetess, the author of 11 books of original poetry and others in re-song, including: White Crow(2005), Gold-in-Sand Picker (2005), Disappearing, Recalling (2016), Go to Ye Lang Kingdom (2023), The Truth Tree of Time (2024, forthcoming), and English translation book In a Flash of Lightening (Canada, 2023), Spanish translation book OTRA VES AYER (Buenos Aires, 2024), Slovak translation book Zmiznutia a návraty (2018), Korean translation book Roses and Sacrificial Meat (2019), etc. Zhao Si's avant-garde role in the modernization and internationalization of Chinese poetry is complementary to her role in the translation and reception of a dozen books by world-leading poets, including: Tomaž Šalamun, Ted Hughes, Vladimir Holan, Edmond Jabès, Yannis Ritsos, Tim Lilburn, and others. She is the recipient of several awards: "2014 Major Support Project" from China Writers Association, "A Mai Ni" Poetry Prize (2023), Polish Jerzego Sulimy-Kaminskiego Literature Medal (2020) and Alfred Kowalkowski Medal for translation (2023). She is a frequent guest in poetry festivals held in the world. She lives in Beijing.
SELECTED POEMS
Children
They disappeared swiftly
without a trace. Coiling waves, whirled-away time,
each a spinning vortex, soft curling locks of hair,
bright smiles.
Acres and acres vanished before
they were dim reflections of stars on the Earth.
Cherubim who borrow the first appearance of the soul,
the quantum fluctuations of their iridescent wings;
stars, too distant from the Earth,
reflections wavering.
Coils and coils, whirled away time, soft angels,
reflections of stars vanished in a blink.
Translated by: Bruce Meyer with Xuan Yuan & Tim Lilburn
Love Dance
Those weary faces are my face, too;
those hopeless hearts, all my heart;
those struggling people struggle inside me;
this tattered world is the clothing I also have to wear;
but earthly happiness fails to satisfy my desiring soul.
Yet, in each illuminating flash of divine creation,
I see that tacit, esoteric congenital hold
that unfolds its illustrious phoenix tail,
buttressing my waist with empathy
in the brutal dance to survive.
Translated by: Bruce Meyer with Xuan Yuan & Tim Lilburn
Sighs
for all the slaughtered victims
I hear, I hear the flock of rain, crowing, rushing out of stirred crowds,
a deluge of chaos and fright, laughing, roars of laughter
crashing into the Wailing Wall. Triumphant karma holds a sharp blade
in its mouth and slices the sigh into pieces; one piece, two pieces,
feathers flutter, dancing. You emerge among the whirling sleet.
What is beyond mortal imagination arises –
the appointed time has come –
the sky shatters into snowflakes.
I see, I see the suffering, the dukha of your heart, as it swells up, up
until an angel thunders out; he flexes the roots
of his dark, unfamiliar wings, pressing against the cyclone
from an emptiness in the heart, then bows his head to peck
an immense, petrified world with his sharp beak. Already stone,
you, an enormous sigh, stand upright but burn inside.
A fire wall, a wall of fire burns darkly and damply, smoking
palely and bitterly, collapses, buries, buries the eternal sighs.
Translated by: Bruce Meyer with Xuan Yuan & Tim Lilburn
A Dot
Running a race against destruction, nowhere to hide: a dot runs;
destruction blossoms in ellipsis, large dust-flakes rain down;
a dot runs, desperately, heart full from passing through scudded clouds
across the sky, across the fallen homeland, piercing the core of evil
beyond imagination.
An angel looks back; nowhere to shelter; who is demolishing, demolishing
everything with such speed? Homeless, helpless, I run and run and run
at a loss, nowhere to stop,
a dot running on tips of needles, on blades of knives and chopping boards,
a dot, tiny as a conjured mote – all that remains of my soul,
a dot cast by an urgency to survive. Thank God!
I ride and ride and ride a flower parachute, three flower umbrellas,
against waves of spraying dangers, incessant crises that swell, swell, swell…
One must do something! One dot kicks a shot and the bullets fly;
another dot dashes out like a slant shot from a barrel,
another, riding on bees, jumbo mount buzzing about, at least nine dots
break through the nine millimeter pellet lights in the hell-deep towering
of terror. A twinkle of dots fall,
hopes splash in a star burst!
Struggle! Struggle! Take two sewing needles in my hand,
threefold be the curse I weave and weave and weave around disorder’s head,
a bundle of self-preservation, a preaching finger
covers me; I lie down beneath the sky heading against the morning sun and it
flames out.
Translated by: Bruce Meyer with Xuan Yuan & Tim Lilburn
Rose Garden
A drizzle falls on each headstone,
and for a long time does not pour down into minutes, seconds,
nor hours, months, years. Time is of no use.
The cemetery is immersed in the bottomless pit of autumn rain,
leafless branches tracing veins of night;
stone sculptures of angels, children, urns, carvings…
increase and blend in the promised land of nothingness
turn into one common name: death
a pseudonym of Il nome della rosa.
Winding graveyard, endless path, it rains
in the passionate symbol garden of the tranquil world.
Browsing among tombstone pages of this memorial book
wandering visitors are spellbound
as every letter spills over from the tranquility;
detached from the context of the world’s stone language,
symbols fall away into life or death
and lament the homeland with no means of return.
In Powazki Cemetery, I made one cautious step
closer to the stone forbidden zone of nihilism
plunged into the vast unknown!
The entire Earth rises from this meditation
and becomes a colossal dark rose garden.
Translated by: Bruce Meyer with Xuan Yuan & Tim Lilburn