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Image: vintage Cuban cigar box label, Cubanos, Cuban Style
Ma Yongbo 马永波, July 2025, Harbin, hot weather necessitates a haircut, but a few weeks
before then 👇he stopped briefly by his house in Nanjing, where he occasionally lives beside the
University where he is a lecturer.
YouTube link Ma Yongbo smoking Havana Cigar at breakfast in Nanjing HERE 🔥https://m.youtube.com/shorts/vtW2faomIIQ
Revolution on the Thigh 大腿上的革命
The thigh is brown
the tobacco leaves twisted by fingers are brown
the curled old love letter is also brown
Havana’s afternoon is so slow
the grey light of the Caribbean disseminates forgiveness and forgetting
She wraps silence, sunlight, and the shadows of palm trees
into prayers and gestures as thin as cicada wings
a whole experimental field ripens in the depths of her skirt
Men stand around the corner of a distant house
discussing revolution and fire, rolling thick wooden sticks
between two corners of their mouth
Tobacco silk quivers gently on the silk-smooth leg
the entire island grows quiet
only the friction of calluses on her fingertips remains
only the sparks on Che Guevara’s motorcycle seat
refuse to fall
Revolution, too, can be this gentle
May 25, 2025
Response Poetry by Ma Yongbo 马永波
Response Poetry Translated by Ma Yongbo 马永波
大腿上的革命 Revolution on the Thigh 马永波
大腿是褐色的
手指捻动的烟叶是褐色的
卷边的旧情书也是褐色的
哈瓦那的午后如此缓慢
加勒比海的灰光弥散着宽恕和遗忘
她把沉默、阳光与棕榈的阴影
裹进薄如蝉翼的祈祷和姿势
一整座实验田在她的裙裾深处成熟
男人们在远处房子的拐角
谈论革命与火，把粗壮的木头
在两个嘴角之间滚来滚去
烟丝在丝滑的腿上轻轻颤动
整座岛屿都安静下来
只有她指腹薄茧的摩擦
只有切·格瓦拉摩托车后座上
迟迟不肯坠落的火星
革命，也可以这样温柔
2025年5月25日，马永波
Image: Ma Yongbo’s breakfast in his Nanjing home : bright red cherries, coffee, tea and cigar
“I was fascinated, thinking what might happen to his gut as he mixed all these substances together…” Helen Pletts, 17th July 2025
a man and cherries in circumnavigation of the gut of poetry—for Yongbo
在诗歌脏腑中环行的男人与樱桃——致永波
—after consuming a breakfast of bright red cherries, tea, coffee and a fat cigar
——在享用了红樱桃、茶、咖啡和一支粗雪茄的早餐之后
his red breakfast of cherries are wearing their luminous warmth,
a dark poetry belly will glow in the dark like a hot coal fire,
inside him are pre-digesting ribbons of light refracted from the knife blades of whole rivers he has swallowed days before, water cut and sparkling now in gurgling red.
The cherries as fermenting embryos, blushing and sweating in the darkness as they merge into plasma,
hot and sparkling as he lights a cigar,
swigs in coffee and blasts of cigar smoke; bellowed breath fuelling the dissolving cherries anew,
the amorphous cherries are nomadic wanderers, they visit chamber after chamber, as elevated red magma, startling the curves of his body with their bright energy.
The poet tries on a cup of tea, from the smallest teapot,
the cigar smoke is whimsy and foolish, it has focused on the phone, snapping itself endlessly,
there is a patter of feet through a door marked exit, but the ‘in’ is the poet writing,
the poet come home
25th May 2025
Written after consuming a late breakfast of two tiny bars of vegan organic dark chocolate
Response Poetry by Helen Pletts 海伦·普莱茨
Response Poetry Translated by Ma Yongbo 马永波
在诗歌脏腑中环行的男人与樱桃——致永波
a man and cherries in circumnavigation of the gut of poetry—for Yongbo
——在享用了红樱桃、茶、咖啡和一支粗雪茄的早餐之后
—after consuming a breakfast of bright red cherries, tea, coffee and a fat cigar
他那樱桃的红色早餐裹着熠熠暖意，
暗黑的诗歌之腹将如炭火在暗处发光，
他体内，数日前吞咽的整条河流的刀刃
折射出光带，正提前消化——
水流被切割，此刻在汩汩的红色里闪烁。
樱桃如发酵的胚胎，在暗处脸红冒汗，渐渐融为血浆，
他点燃雪茄，燥热与星火四溅，
灌下咖啡，喷出烟圈；
呼出的气息让溶解的樱桃再次沸腾，
无形的樱桃是游牧者，
它们以高扬的红色岩浆之态，
一间间拜访身体的房室，
用灼灼能量惊动躯体的曲线。
诗人从最小的茶壶里斟茶，
雪茄烟缥缈又荒唐，
缠上了手机，不断自拍，
有啪嗒的脚步声穿过标着“出口”的门，
而“入口”是诗人在书写，
诗人回家
2025年5月25日，海伦·普莱茨
（在享用两块迷你纯素有机黑巧克力的延迟早餐后而作）
Image: Ma Yongbo 马永波 on the train back to Nanjing where he is a lecturer at the Poetics
Research Centre, Nanjing University, June 2025
MA YONGBO 马永波 was born in 1964, Ph.D, representative of Chinese avant-garde poetry, and a leading scholar in Anglo-American poetry. He is the founder of polyphonic writing and objectified poetics. He is also the first translator to introduce British and American postmodern poetry into Chinese, making contributions that fill gaps, the various postmodern poetry schools in Chinese are mostly guided by his poetics and translation.
He has published over eighty original works and translations since 1986 included 9 poetry collections.He focused on translating and teaching Anglo-American poetry and prose including the work of Dickinson, Whitman, Stevens, Pound, Williams and Ashbery. He recently published a complete translation of Moby Dick, which has sold over 600,000 copies. He teaches at Nanjing University of Science and Technology. The Collected Poems of Ma Yongbo (four volumes, Eastern Publishing Centre, 2024) comprising 1178 poems, celebrate 40 years of writing poetry.
His work is widely published in international journals such as New American Writing，Livemag, Cafe Review, International Times, Vox Populi, Ink Sweat and Tears, Orbis, Cambridge Poetry, Polismagazino.gr, europeanpoetry.com, Verse-Virtual.org, Magique Publishing, Primelore.com, Verseum Literary, Area Felix，Masticadoresusa，Feed the Holy，ONE, Sindhcourier，Lingo Lexicon，Worldinkers，Avantappalachia，Masticadorescanada，Madswirl，Collaborature，Allyourpoems，Homouniversalisgr，100subtextsmagazine，Pandemoniumjournal，Cultural Reverence，Rochford Street Review，Synchchaos，Ezra，Autumn Sky Poetry Daily，Nuthatchmag，Posit，Yumpu，Our Poetry Archive，All Your Poems，Subliminal.surgery，Atunis，Insightmagazine，Lothlorien Poetry Journal，Acheron，Gorkogazette，A Too Powerful Word，Chiron Review，Gas，Chewers，Medusaskitchen，Beatnikcowboy，Dear O Deer!，New Black Bart Poetry Society, Edge of Humanity，Liveencounters，Big Other etc.
“Ma Yongbo is a poet of snow, shadows, and absences. His poems have committed the bodies of his parents and his elder brother to ceremonial flames, and explore, over and over, scenes from a long-lost childhood. “Break free from the cloud shadows in your heart,” he commands, while another poem admonishes, “nothing can hurt you,/ you are already dead.” He makes room for the uncanny, and seeks essence”, Rosanna Warren, July 2025
马永波出生于1964年，文学博士，中国先锋诗歌代表人物，领先的英美诗歌学者。他是复调写作和客观化诗学的奠基者，也是第一个将英美后现代诗歌译介进汉语的翻译家，具有填补空白的贡献，汉语中诸种后现代诗歌流派多受其诗学与翻译的引领。
从1986年起，他已出版原创与翻译著作80余卷，包括9部诗集。他专注于翻译和教授英美诗歌和散文，包括狄金森、惠特曼、史蒂文斯、庞德、威廉斯和阿什贝利的作品。他最近出版了《白鲸》的全译本，销量已超过60万册。他任教于南京理工大学。《马永波诗歌总集》（四卷本，东方出版中心，2024年）共收录1178首诗，庆祝他诗学探索40周年。
马永波是一位书写雪、影子与虚无的诗人。他的诗歌将父母与兄长的躯体献祭给仪式之火，反复探寻早已消逝的童年场景。他在诗中发出指令，“挣脱内心的片片云影”，而另一首诗却警示道：“没有什么能伤害你，/你已经死了。”他为诡谲留出空间，并探寻本质。（罗桑娜·沃伦）
Image: Helen Pletts in her garden in Cambridge, UK, 16th July 2025
HELEN PLETTS 海伦·普莱茨 is a British poet based in Cambridge, whose work has been translated into Chinese, Bangla, Greek, Vietnamese, Serbian, Korean, Arabic, Italian and Romanian. She is the English co-translator of Chinese poet Ma Yongbo.
Helen’s poetry has garnered significant recognition, including five shortlistings for the Bridport Poetry Prize (2018, 2019, 2022, 2023, 2024), two longlistings for The Rialto Nature & Place Prize (2018, 2022), a longlisting for the Ginkgo Prize (2019), a longlisting for the National Poetry Competition (2022), 2nd Prize in the Plaza Prose Poetry Competition (2022-23), and a shortlisting for the Plaza Prose Poetry Competition (2023-24).
Her three collections include the illustrated ‘your eye protects the soft-toed snow drop’, with Romit Berger (2022, ISBN 978-9-657-68177-0, Gama Poetry) and two early collections ‘Bottle bank’ (2008 ISBN 978-1-84923-119-0), and ‘For the chiding dove’ (2009, ISBN 978-1-84923-485-6) published by YWO/Legend Press with Arts Council support. Her prizewinning prose poetry features in The Plaza Prizes anthologies, and her eco-poetry appears in anthologies from Open Shutter Press and Fly on the Wall Press. Her work is widely published in international journals such as International Times, Vox Populi, Ink Sweat and Tears, Aesthetica, Orbis, The Mackinaw, Cambridge Poetry,
The Fenland Reed, Poetry on the Lake, Polismagazino.gr, europeanpoetry.com, Verse-Virtual.org, Magique Publishing, Primelore.com, Deshusa.com, Verseum Literary, Stigmalogou.gr, Area Felix, sindhcourier.com, www.cnpnews.co.kr. In Chinese translation by Ma Yongbo —New World Poetry , Literary World, Prose Poetry, Silver, Poetry Reference.
Publisher Kate Birch describes her work: “Helen’s very personal poetry reveals her strong connection to the natural world while also laying herself open emotionally. She writes with a thoughtful, mesmerising delicacy on love and death, on joy and need, illness and exhaustion.”
海伦·普莱茨（Helen Pletts）是一位生活在剑桥的英国诗人，其作品已被译为中文、孟加拉语、希腊语、越南语、塞尔维亚语、韩语、阿拉伯语、意大利语和罗马尼亚语。她是中国诗人马永波诗歌的英文合作译者。
普莱茨的诗歌创作屡获殊荣：五度入围布里德波特诗歌奖（2018、2019、2022-2024），两度入选《里亚尔托》自然与地方诗歌奖长名单（2018、2022），入围银杏生态诗歌奖（2019）、英国国家诗歌大赛（2022），获广场散文诗大赛亚军（2022-23）并再度入围该奖项决选名单（2023-24）。
她出版的三部诗集包括与罗米特·伯杰合作的插图诗集《你的眼睛守护着软趾雪花莲》（2022年，ISBN 978-9-657-68177-0，伽马诗歌），以及由青年作家组织/传奇出版社在艺术委员会资助下出版的早期诗集《瓶子银行》（2008年，ISBN 978-1-84923-119-0）与《致训诫之鸽》（2009年，ISBN 978-1-84923-485-6）。其获奖散文诗收录于《广场奖选集》，生态诗歌见于“打开快门”出版社与“墙头蝇”出版社的选集。作品广泛发表于《国际时报》《民众之声》《墨汗泪》《美学》《奥比斯》《麦基诺》《剑桥诗刊》《沼地芦苇》《湖上诗刊》《城邦》《欧洲诗歌》《诗虚拟》《魔法》《原始传说》《德胡萨》《诗界》《理念的圣痕》《菲利克斯领域》《信德信使》等。中文译本由马永波发表在《新大陆诗刊》《文学天地》《散文诗》《白银》《诗参考》等。
出版人凯特·伯奇如此评价她的作品：“海伦的诗歌极具个人特质，既展现了她与自然世界的深刻关联，又毫无保留地袒露情感。她以一种沉思的、令人着迷的细腻笔触，书写爱与死亡、欢愉与渴求、疾病与衰竭。”
Image: Ma Yongbo, sleeper car, train to Nanjing, China, June 2025
All respective images copyright © poet Ma Yongbo 马永波 and Helen Pletts 海伦·普莱茨
.