Canyon in the Body

Translated by Fiona Sze-Lorrain

From the publisher:

In Lan Lan's first poetry collection to appear in English, translator Fiona Sze-Lorrain has grouped the poems into five thematic sections that showcase Lan Lan’s “lyricism, austerity, luminosity, and moral sensibilities.” Lan Lan published her first sequence of poems at the age of 14, and to this day maintains a discipline of producing one poem per week.

Her early love of nature has infused her poetry since the beginning, as has an interest in the relationship between poetry and music. Later poems also explore sensuality, the working class (cobblers, carpenters, blacksmiths), train rides, innovative uses of punctuation, botany, silence and light. She has published nine volumes of poetry, as well as several books of prose and children’s fiction, and her work has been translated into ten languages.