Poems by Guan-xiu Translated by Xiaoqiu Qiu

Monk poet Guan-xiu (832-912AD) was a renowned Chan (Zen) Buddhist hermit, wanderer, and artist of many disciplines at a turmoil time of Medieval China. Like many Chan monks before him, he embodied poetry in his religious meditation and vice versa. Unlike those hermits of peaceful times, he wandered the war torn landscape in the aftermath of one of the most tragic periods in human history—a civil war that decimated up to 80% of the people of the most populous country on earth then (est. 50 million). Reflecting this drastic social change, he was one of the first to break through the old poetic conventions, as we see him experiment with more vernacular tones, more humanistic perspectives, and more variable musical patterns. More importantly, he sought peace and restorative potential from nature, and aimed to transfer its healing power to the people he met (mostly in exile) through the poetry he gifted them. No translation of his poems has been published in English (except for my own), but I believe he has tremendous relevance to today’s world in finding inner stability of the heart through the external natural world. Many difficulties lie in translating from Classical Chinese, including its grammar, rhymes, and ambiguity—it is no less than reinventing them in English. I aimed to respect its musical patterns by and large but at times be loyal to its imageries by utilizing more line breaks and spaces. His work is in public domain, since the author died more than a century ago (912 AD), permission has been granted.

Xiaoqiu Qiu is a Chinese poet and translator. He is an editor at Interim magazine and recently put together a special issue of translation on the theme of “Carrying Over.” His award-winning work has been published in Meridian, Reed Magazine, Sunspot Lit, and elsewhere. His translated poems have been published by Lunch Ticket, ANTONYM, and DEFUNCT. His poetry chapbook Other Side of Sea has been published by Etchings Press by the University of Indianapolis. He translates from the Chinese and Spanish. Currently, he is a Black Mountain Institute Fellow and a PhD student of Creative Writing at UNLV.  

12 December 2023