the lantern light seems to have written a poem;
they feel lonesome since i won’t read them.
—“lantern” by Fei Ming

The work of Tang Dynasty Classical Chinese poets such as Li Bai, Du Fu, and Wang Wei has long been celebrated in both China and internationally, and various English translations and mistranslations of their work played a pivotal yet often unacknowledged role in shaping the emergence and evolution of modern Anglophone poetry.

In The Lantern and the Night Moths, Chinese diaspora poet-translator Yilin Wang has selected and translated poems by five of China’s most innovative modern and contemporary poets: Qiu Jin, Fei Ming, Dai Wangshu, Zhang Qiaohui, and Xiao Xi. Expanding on and subverting the long lineage of Classical Chinese poetry that precedes them, their work can be read collectively as a series of ars poeticas for modern Sinophone poetry.

Wang’s translations are featured alongside the original Chinese texts, and accompanied by Wang’s personal essays reflecting on the art, craft, and labour of poetry translation. Together, these poems and essays chart the development of a myriad of modernist poetry traditions in China that parallel, diverge from, and sometimes intersect with their Anglophone and Western counterparts.

Yilin Wang 王艺霖 (she/they) is a writer, a poet, and Chinese-English translator. Her writing has appeared in Clarkesworld, Fantasy Magazine, The Malahat Review, Grain, CV2, The Ex-Puritan, the Toronto Star, The Tyee, Words Without Borders, and elsewhere. She is the editor and translator of The Lantern and Night Moths (Invisible Publishing, 2024). Her translations have also appeared in POETRY, Guernica, Room, Asymptote, Samovar, The Common, LA Review of Books’ “China Channel,” and the anthology The Way Spring Arrives and Other Stories (TorDotCom 2022). She has won the Foster Poetry Prize, received an Honorable Mention in the poetry category of Canada’s National Magazine Award, has been longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize, and has been a finalist for an Aurora Award. Yilin has an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC and is a graduate of the 2021 Clarion West Writers Workshop.

Qiu Jin 秋瑾 (1875–1907) was a Chinese writer, poet, essayist, revolutionary, and the founder of the feminist publication China Women’s News 中国女报. Defying the gender expectations of her time, she practiced crossdressing, learned sword-fighting and horseback riding, and acquired a traditional scholarly education. Later, she connected with other activists of China’s feminist movement, studied abroad in Japan, and returned home to join a revolution against the oppressive imperial Qing dynasty government and for women’s rights. When the uprising she took part in failed, she chose to die as a martyr rather than escape, which has led her to become known as a feminist revolutionary icon in China and internationally. In the brief thirty-two years of life before her execution, Qiu Jin wrote over two-hundred poems, which have been compiled into various collections posthumously.

Fei Ming 废名 (1901-1967) was an influential modern Chinese poet, short story writer, novelist, and essayist, and a member of the Yǔ Sī Sè 语丝社, a literary group founded by Lu Xun and Zhou Zuoren. He was the author of various poetry books, short story collections, and novels, including Mirror, The Stories of the Bamboo Grove, and Bridge. Fei Ming’s work was deeply influenced by Buddhism, Daoism, and different schools of Chinese philosophy.

Dai Wangshu 戴望舒 (1905–1950) was a poet, editor, translator, and leading figure in the Chinese modernist literature movement. With an interest and education in French literature, he was influenced by the work of French Neo-symbolist poets such as Paul Fort and Francis Jammes, as well as ancient Daoist texts and Tang dynasty verse. His writing blends archaic allusions and diction with modern poetics to explore themes such as love, death, and nostalgia.

Zhang Qiaohui 张巧慧 (1978–) is a Chinese writer, poet, essayist, a member of the Chinese Writers Association, and the curator of Chenzhifo Art Gallery. She has published five poetry collections and an essay collection in Chinese. Her writing has appeared in numerous literary journals, including People’s Literature, Poetry Journal, and October, and been selected for “year’s best” anthologies. She has received honors such as the Sanmao Literary Essay Prize. In 2018, the Chinese journal Poetry named her one of China’s “top 20 most innovative women poets.”

Xiao Xi 小西 (1974–) is a poet based in Qingdao in Shandong, China. She is the author of two poetry books in Chinese, Blue Salt 蓝色的盐and The Wind Would Not Cease 风不止. Her poetry has appeared in dozens of Chinese literary journals such as People’s Literature, Poetry Journal, and October, and has been published in English translation in POETRY and Guernica.

Yilin Wang's profile page

“Wang’s prose is searching and instructive, while inviting the reader into an intimate conversation between the poet and the translator. [And the] translations cover an astonishing range… The Lantern and the Night Moths is an embarrassment of riches, as exceptionally alert to beauty as to the structures of power that regulate its dispersion.”—Janani Ambikapathy, Harriet Books, The Poetry Foundation

“An exceptional book of translations and literary criticism [and Wang’s] accompanying essays (one per poet) make for a rich but accessible reading experience. The Lantern and the Night Moths is a wholly impressive work that is sure to appeal to many audiences.”—Annick MacAskill, Quill & Quire, Starred Review

“Yilin Wang’s translation is an intensely loving conversation with the poets she considers her zhīyīn—soul friends who know her sound, her song. In her careful, poignant selection and translation, these poets write the music of misty longing. Some search for wisdom. Some yearn for the lost home. Some listen to the way pages rustle, cicadas sing. Some watch crimson dust drift. Some sip dew when parched, dine on petals when hungry. Some marvel under a bright net of suns endless in number. Wang’s earnest, heart-rousing translation shows us how the most ephemeral streak of brightness or sound, like the frail light of a lantern, or the swift flicker of butterflies, is writing and translating the poetry of our lives.”—Quyên Nguyễn-Hoàng, poet and translator of Chronicles of a Village by Nguyễn Thanh Hiện

"The Lantern and the Night Moths is a spectacular communion of languages, poetry, and time. Yilin Wang’s translations of Fei Ming, Qiu Jin, Zhang Qiaohui, Xiao Xi, and Dai Wangshu are extraordinary as she courageously traverses the unsayable spaces between Chinese and English with the gentleness and rigour of only the most skilled and loving translator. Erudite and attentive to the granularity of words and things, Wang shows us—with exceptional generosity—the many ways that poetry can reveal, remake, unsettle, seek, survive, and call us back home."—Gillian Sze, author of Quiet Night Think

"The Lantern and the Night Moths, translated by Yilin Wang, is an evocative anthology of modern and contemporary Chinese poetry. This collection reflects the translator's deep connection to her roots and the universal themes of longing and identity. Through these translations, Wang resurrects overlooked voices, particularly of women poets, and celebrates the enduring power of language and poetry. This work is not just a book of poems; it's a journey across linguistic and cultural landscapes, offering a poignant look at the human spirit through the lens of the Chinese diaspora."—Jack Saebyok Jung, co-translator of Yi Sang: Selected Works, winner of 2021 MLA Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for a Translation of a Literary Work

“There’s an immense range in the poems themselves, themes of identity and longing/belonging emerge [as well as] so much that is deeply personal in [Wang’s] essays. She includes thoughtful biographical information about the poets and discusses the fascinating art and craft of translation.” —Book Riot

“The voices of these poets who lived through China’s modernity from the beginning to the present moment, given life for an Anglophone audience by Wang’s careful work and keen commentary, are not only a collection of poetry translations and essays, but a lively and continuing conversation. The Lantern and the Night Moths speaks not only to fellow travellers straddling the two disciplines of poetry and translation regularly declared worthless, unnecessary, and obsolete, but also to a global community who bear the scars and triumphs of this construct called modernity.”—L.J. Lee, Exchanges: Journal of Literary Translation

“While I loved getting to know five amazing Chinese poets, The Lantern and the Night Moths made more of an impression on me as an ode to the complexity and beauty of translation. Wang shares the thoughts and struggles she had while translating each poem, places where she could have made different choices and what spurred her to use the final one she chose, and meditates on the beauty of each poem. This is a carefully written and considered labour of love for Sinophone poetry. The poems are lovely, and it is a treat to read these works that were previously inaccessible to anglophones who couldn’t read Chinese. This is a gift Wang is sharing with us: the work of these poets, their stories and context in which they wrote, and her relationship with these works as she translated them.”—Alison Manley, The Miramichi Review

“Yilin Wang intimately shares the act of translation that comes from a profound connection with one’s mother tongue—each poem blooms before one’s eyes, a wonderful encapsulation of autumn moon and winds, of yearning for home. Wang reincarnates the language of diaspora, blending her personal experiences with the story of poets, while dissecting the history of the classics of poetry.”—Elena Luo, book reviewer and bookstagrammer (@elena.luo)

“I’ve been reading this book slowly, savoring each poem, delving into the translator notes and realizing how much I have missed by not attending to Chinese poetry. … Sometimes, one anticipates a book and finds it to be satisfactory. The Lantern and the Night Moths exceeded my every expectation.”—Erica Friedman, founder of Yuricon