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Wong May
- About
- Reviews
- Awards
Wong May was born in the war capital, Chongqing in 1944 China. She was brought up in Singapore by her mother, a classical Chinese poet. She studied English Literature at the University of Singapore with the poet D.J. Enright; she was at the Iowa Writers Workshop 1966–68. Soon after, she left the USA for Europe. She lives in Dublin, where she paints under the name Ittrium Coey. She has exhibited in Dublin & Grenoble.
'[An] extraordinary Afterword, titled 'The Numbered Passages of a Rhinoceros in the China Shop', is a magnificent, peculiar tour de force that spans nearly a hundred pages, and the book is transformed by its existence [...] entrancing, and entirely sincere.'
Daryl Lim Wei Jie, Asian Books Blog
'A book very contemporary in its human closeness.... Wong May offers an extensive Afterword on the poetry and its interpreters. No mere translator's note, this capacious essay is historical, critical, comical, personal, structural and mystical by turns, exploring the Tang context of the original poets and the poetry's echoes over the last millennium or so, up through Pound and Mao and Dharma Bums. Wong May hopes "to return the text to the body of world literature" through her investigations as a translator and critic. Her work deserves this hope, which is better than any reparative aim for poetry, always complicit in and resistant to the politics of its times.'
Harry Josephine Giles, Poetry Book Society Translation Selector
Awards won by Wong May
Joint winner, 2022 A Windham Campbell Prize for Poetry
Commended, 2022 The Poetry Book Society Spring Translation Choice (In the Same Light)
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