Golden Rice Sheaves

Translator’s note: Zheng Min, who turned 101 in July, is the last living writer of the Nine Leaves of Chinese modernist poets, a term used for nine of the pioneering writers who were active in the 1940s and later published in a monumental collection entitled Nine Leaves (1981). The anthology started a new period of poetry in contemporary China that lasted till the present time with continual debates, several of which were ignited by Zheng’s essays or interviews. This poem was written during the war when three major universities were relocated to Kunming, Yunnan province, named Southwest United University. Zheng attended Southwest United and graduated in 1943. She saw rice fields on the way from the classroom to her dormitory one day.

Zheng Min (1920–2022) was one of the most important poets from China. She taught poetry at Beijing Normal University from 1960 till retirement in 2006. Her Collected Poems appeared in 2016. Also an accomplished translator and critic, she published Contemporary American Poetry (1987) and four books of critical essays on Western philosophy and comparative poetics.

Ming Di is a Chinese poet living in the US with six books of poetry published in China. Co-founder and editor of PoetryEastWest, she translates both ways and has published four books of poetry in Chinese translation and two anthologies. She received the 2021 Lishan Poetry Award (for translation) in China.