New Publication
For a Splendid Sunny Apocalypse
By Jiang Tao; Translator Josh Stenber
In these melancholy and self-mocking poems — populated with youths and elders, cellphones and televisions — Jiang Tao presents and dissects a discontent with the state of the world. He employs his profound wit and poetic mastery to explore the passage of time, rural-urban migration, change and impermanence, and the difficulties of human communication and connection. Jiang Tao’s verse is, as translator Josh Stenberg has written, “a quintessential expression of urban malaise in contemporary China.” This is his first book to appear in English and is presented bilingually on facing pages.
Jiang Tao’s poetry is laid back, ironic, and human above all. … This book is a beautiful new chapter in the story of Chinese poetry in English.—Maghiel van Crevel
Jiang Tao is a Beijing-based poet, literary critic, translator, and historian, known as much for his wry, cerebral verse as his ground-breaking studies of Republican (1911-49) literature. An Associate Professor at Peking University, he has held literary residencies in Japan, Taiwan, and the United States. His first collection Bird Sutras was published in 2005, and he has since published Four Poems and Mourning for Sometimes. He won the Liu Li’an Prize for Poetry in 1997.
Translator Josh Stenberg is a Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Sydney and a holder of a Discovery Early Career Researcher Award from the Australian Research Council. He is the author of Minority Stages: Sino-Indonesian Performance and Public Display (2019) and Liyuanxi: Chinese ‘Pear Garden’ Theatre (2022) as well as the translator of five books of contemporary Chinese literature.