Lan Lan

Lan Lan , pseudonym for Hu Lanlan , (* 1967 in Yantai Province Shandong ) is a Chinese writer . She wrote more than nine volumes of poetry and is considered one of the most important contemporary poets in China. Lan Lan has also published various essay volumes and collections of children's and young adult novels. Her texts have been translated into over ten languages, including French, Russian, English and German. Her first volume of poetry was published as an English translation in the USA in 2014 under the title Canyon in the Body . Her most important publications include Life with a Smile (1990), Inner Life (1997) and From Here, to Here (2008). In 2009 she received the “Poetry & People” award, the Yulong Poetry Prize, the “Best Ten Poets in China” award and the “Bing Xin Children's Literature New Work” award for her literary work.

Life

The author was born and raised in Shandong Province, beyond the reach of the harsh Cultural Revolution between 1966 and 1976. Her family lived a village life, her school was in a cowshed, the tables were made of sun-dried mud. Her poems were first published in the renowned literary magazine "Fragrant Grass" at the age of fourteen. But their success was short-lived: it was followed by years of poor health that prevented Lan Lan from attending university. Although she never lost sight of poetry as her calling, the circumstances meant she had to work in a wide variety of professions: Among other things, she was a crane driver, worked in a factory and eventually became a specialist writer. These experiences appear in her poems: Small villages full of day laborers populate her clear verse.

Two other themes that influenced her poems from the beginning are love and nature. She often uses one of the themes as a metonymy for the other. In later works she discovers sensuality, romance and femininity as well as the theme of working-class society. As if through urban glasses, she looks and describes the details of the receding natural world.

Lan Lan is a member of the Henan Literature Institute and was a town clerk at Beijing University . She lives in Beijing with her husband and two daughters .

Literary work

Canyon in the Body (2014, translation: Fiona Sze-Lorrain) is the first volume of poetry to be published in the USA. This book is one of her most distinctive works. Divided into five sections, the collection of poems shows in different ways the emotionality, the scarcity and the sensitivity of the author. The book has been described in the press as "a collection of beautiful, easy poems" (Alluringly Short) and as "a book of light, weightless verse, beneath the surface of which lies the seriousness of deep secrets" ( World Literature Today ). The Los Angeles Book Review writes: “It's not just the peasant life that makes Lan Lan's poems so tempting. Also inspire their inaccessibility and indeterminacy. "( The Los Angeles Review )

Nails (2014) is a small volume of poetry that was created during the International Poetry Nights in Hong Kong in 2013. It has so far been published in Chinese and English and is also available as a collection together with small volumes by other poets.

bibliography

English-language original edition
1990: Life with a smile , Lan Lan, Baihua Literature and Art Publishing House / not published in German translation
1993: Songs of Romance , Lan Lan, Guangxi Publishing House / not published in German translation
1997: Inner Life , Lan Lan, Anhui literature and Art Publishing House / not published in German translation
2003: Sleep, Sleep , Lan Lan, Hebei Education Publishing House / not published in German translation
2008: From Here, to Here , Lan Lan, Henan literature and Art Publishing House / not published in German translation
2014: Canyon in the Body , Lan Lan, Zephyr Press ( Brookline, Massachusetts ) / not published in German translation

Nominations and Awards

date	Nomination / award
1996	Liu Li'an Poetry Prize
2005	one of “China's New Century Top Ten Young Women Poets”
2009	"Poetry & People" Award
2009	Yulong Poetry Prize
2009	Best Ten Poets in China Award
2009	Bing Xin Children's Literature New Work Award

Web links

• Lan Lan website in the original language
• Winter 2012–13 - Robert Dana, Lan Lan, Leung Ping-kwan
• Cerise Press - The Grace of Words: Deep in Lan Lan's Lyricism

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Poems by Lan Lan inTranslation, March 2011 (accessed December 19, 2016)
2. ↑ ^{a b} Translator’s Note Cerise Press (accessed December 19, 2016)
3. ↑ Book Review: Canyon in the Body by Lan Lan , The Los Angeles Review (accessed December 20, 2016)
4. ↑ Canyon in the Body by Lan Lan translated by Fiona Sze-Lorrain ( Memento of the original from December 24, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Alluringly Short (accessed December 20, 2016) 
5. ↑ Chinese and American Poetry Reading , Bowery Poetry, March 30, 2015 (accessed December 20, 2016)
6. ↑ Lan Lan PANGOLIN HOUSE AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CHINESE & ENGLISH-LANGUAGE POETRY (accessed December 20, 2016)
7. ↑ Canyon in the Body Paper Republic (accessed December 20, 2016)
8. ↑ Canyon in the Body by Lan Lan translated by Fiona Sze-Lorrain ( Memento of the original from December 24, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Alluringly Short, February 9, 2015 (accessed December 20, 2016) 
9. ↑ Canyon in the Body by Lan Lan World Literature Today (accessed December 20, 2016)
10. ↑ Book Review: Canyon in the Body by Lan Lan The Los Angeles Review (accessed December 20, 2016)
11. ↑ Nails Columbia University Press (accessed December 20, 2016)