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Articles by Ming Di
“The Pain That Adjoined Me as a Twin Since Birth”: A Conversation with Kurdish Poet Hussein Habasch, by Ming Di
Home | Magazine  | January 2026 |  Interviews This page is available to subscribers. Click here to signin or get access. Photo of Afrin, by Bertramz / wikicommons Hussein Habasch is a poet from Afrin, Kurdistan, currently based in Bonn, Germany. Ming Di is a poet from China currently based in California. They met at the International Poetry Festival of Guayaquil in Ecuador in 2017 and the Safi International Poetry Festival in Morocco in 2018.
How Is American Poetry Reviewed in China?, by Ming Di
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to signin or get access. We asked Ming Di to take a look at how US poets have been reviewed in China for the past decade. The results provide a window into what reviewers are seeing in US poets’ work and which poets are most popular in China. (Spoiler alert: Ocean Vuong is as popular there as he is here.) One might be surprised to see how some poets in China admire Forrest Gander while others loudly praise Charles Bukowski.
“Not Knowing How to Get There Is What Makes You Great”: A Conversation with Chilean Poet Mario Meléndez, by Ming Di
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access. Regarded as one of the most original voices of the new Latin American poetry, Mario Meléndez (b. 1971) is a Chilean poet born in Linares. Among his books are Vuelo subterráneo, El circo de papel, La muerte tiene los días contados, Esperando a Perec, Jardín de escombros, and El mago de la soledad. Selections of poetry have been translated into more than fifteen languages.
Two Poems from China, by Gao Qiongxian
by Ming Di Gao Qiongxian is the first Indigenous-minority women poet of Derung (Dulong) nationality from Yunnan province, southwest China. Derung is the smallest ethnic group in Yunnan. Derung people practiced shamanism up till the early 1950s. The first elementary school was opened in 1956 there, ending the age of Quipu (using knotted ropes as a writing system.) Gao speaks Derung as her mother tongue.
Literary Los Angeles, by Dana Gioia & Ming Di
This page is available to subscribers. Click here to signin or get access. Perpetually Demolished, Perpetually Renewed by Dana Gioia Los Angeles is an impossible city to describe, even for natives. Make any assertion about the place, and the opposite will often be true. There is an old downtown but no real center. Like London, Los Angeles is a metropolis formed by dozens of small towns and districts growing until they merged.
Cleaners, by Vladimir Pryakhin
Vladimir (Vlad) Pryakhin was born in 1957 in Tula, Russia. In the 1980s he published The Idealist, a samizdat journal of poetry and prose. Since 1992, his poems and short articles have appeared in literary magazines in Russia as well as in other countries. He is the author of ten books of poetry. In 2012 he became the editor and publisher of The Environment, an international literary almanac. Since 2017, he has been the editor of www.medium.land, a portal dedicated to poetry and art.
The Old Man, by Kebir Ammi
He said: Why must they destroy and destroy again? Why must they forget my face my gestures my voice? Why must they believe in my absence even as I stand in front of them? Why must they erase my wounds and toss my tears to the dogs? Why must they forget that I am a man just like them?
WLT Student Translation Prize - Poetry by Yu Jian
“A Fisherman at Lake Dian.” Photo by Yu Jian. Reading Glasses I am no longer young, a half-blind Homer, wearing reading glasses to see the world. The calendar shows that it is autumn, but I don’t see it. The building across the street has no foliage. A face halfway through its plastic surgery has had glassy eyeballs reinstalled one too many times. Yet the tongue has been ignored, which might be a good thing.
Poetry and Nursing in the Filipino Diaspora: A Conversation with Romalyn Ante, by Marianne Chan
I was lucky to meet Romalyn Ante when I was invited to read at a virtual event organized by R. A. Villanueva and hosted by Books Are Magic in August 2020. Ante was the guest of honor at the event, and her debut poetry collection, Antiemetic for Homesickness, struck me as incredibly powerful and timely. Working for the National Health Service, Ante shows her reader what it is like to be a Filipino nurse in the UK.
World Literature Today Announces 2021 Student Translation Prize Winners
Mariah Rust and Xin Xu recently were named the recipients of the fourth annual translation prize for students sponsored by World Literature Today at the University of Oklahoma. Consistent with World Literature Today’s commitment to publishing literature in translation, the World Literature Today Student Translation Prize recognizes the talent and promise of translation students worldwide.
Windfall, by Jamaica Baldwin
Nina Simone Sings the Blues (RCA Victor, 1967) Series editor’s note: In Jamaica Baldwin’s “Windfall,” the self is buried beneath layers and layers of internalized memories, becoming an ocean of worlds. But instead of resting there, the self is forced to make many crossings, reminded of its past, of the cruel ways in which it is continually defined and contained within language, standing in a lighthouse, both warning and light.
121: A Room of Her Own
121: A Room of Her Own May 13, 2019 · 5:00 A Room of Her Own by Ming Di She never knew love made for such cold winters. She hides in the room she painted for herself, tuning, listening, as music spreads pain like spiderwebs down her legs. She walks from one corner to another, the room grows bright with sunlight, or moon, stabbing her with needles. She paints a wall. Erases. Paints again. Erases. A wall grows like leaves emerging in winter.
Two Poems, by Liu Xia
It’s winter. Even snow doesn’t visit here anymore. But somehow you appear, sitting in front of me swallowing some raw eggs, your face swollen. Even the fire in the furnace doesn’t make you shine. “I can’t afford new clothes. All my shoes are worn out.” You tell me repeatedly. I learn for the first time of your story with him. I’m surprised someone I’ve worshiped could have fear. The man is dead from now on. Your voice is clear, and calm.
“See How She Creates Light: On Translating Liu Xia,” by Ming Di
I was struck by one of the poems Liu Xia released a few days before her husband, Liu Xiaobo, died of cancer as a political prisoner in China. One line in particular hovered in my dreams until one morning I woke up with this translation: “(I wish that I, astonished, would glow) my body / in full bloom of light for you.” I wrote it down quickly: my body in full bloom of light for you.
The New York Review of Books
Between the gray walls and a burst of chopping sounds, morning comes, bundled and sliced, and vanishes with the paralyzed souls of the chopped vegetables. Light and darkness pass through my pupils. How do I know the difference? Sitting in the rust, I can’t tell if it’s the shine on the shackles in the jail or the natural light of Nature from outside the walls. Daylight betrays everything, the splendid sun stunned. Morning stretches and stretches in vain.
Road to Darkness | by Liu Xia
—For Xiaobo Sooner or later you will leave me, one day and take the road to darkness alone. I pray for the moment to reappear so I can see it better, as if from memory. I wish that I, astonished, could glow, my body in full bloom of light for you. But I couldn’t have made it except clenching my fists, not letting the strength, not even a little bit of it, slip through my fingers.
A Poem from China in Memory of Liu Xiaobo, by Liu Xia
Translator’s note: This photo of Liu Xiaobo swimming surfaced on the Internet after the sea burial in Dalian, China. Those of us who were heartbroken by his sudden death felt a little bit relieved after seeing the photo—Xiaobo was a good swimmer and he’s now gone home, to the sea, free. Liu Xia’s first narrative poem was about the sea, in which a fisherman threw his only keepsake into the sea to preserve his memories of love.
Liu Xia | Poetry Foundation
Liu Xia’s Empty Chairs: Selected Poems (Graywolf Press, 2015) was translated from the Chinese by Ming Di and Jennifer Stern
Empty Chairs by Liu Xia
Empty empty empty
so many empty chairs
everywhere. They look
charming in van Gogh’s paintings. I quietly sit on them
and try to rock
but they don’t move —
they are frozen
by what’s breathing inside them. Van Gogh waves his paintbrush —
leave leave leave
there’s no funeral tonight. He looks straight through me,
and I sit down
in the flames of his sunflower
like a piece of clay to be fired. Translated from the Chinese
Home - Poetry International
Carl Phillips(United States, 1959) by PoetryFoundation.org Referred to as “one of America’s most original, influential, and productive of lyric poets,” Carl Phillips is the author of a dozen books of poetry and two works of criticism. He was born in Everett, Washington in 1959, …
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