Ma Yongbo 马永波, Reflecting on Dialectic Translational Poetics: the conversations of Bear and Kitten.
Reflections on Reading Helen’s Many Poems for Me
观海伦诸多赠诗有感
Must you insist on stabbing
my body, which is already leaking everywhere
with your Western fountain pen
until it becomes a sieve of holes?
Yet I only sketch you with a soft brush
into spring mountains like ink-dark brows
and autumn waters rippling with sidelong gazes.
The West’s mirage of the East
you’ve draped over my crumbling old house—
layered roofs, stacked floors, an extra storey
suddenly appearing from the empty sky,
yet unable to store my mouldy scrolls and ideals.
Yet I paint you only a water-ink Troy:
its walls are strokes of soaked black,
those galloping or overfed heroes are but tiny graffiti.
Meanwhile, you’ve long sailed away lightly
on an Eastern boat of light
through fallen leaves of generations.
The collars, rain, and darkness you penned
cut sharp as Cambridge’s slanting rooftops.
I rewrite them with my brush
till they soften like rice paper,
can be folded into white Kongming lanterns
soaring higher and higher, until they turn to tangerine stars.
Dawn, March 27, 2025
Response Poetry By Ma Yongbo 马永波
Response Poetry Translated by Ma Yongbo 马永波
观海伦诸多赠诗有感
Reflections on Reading Helen’s Many Poems for Me
你非得用你那西方的钢笔
把我本就四处漏风的身体
戳出无数个窟窿，才肯罢休吗
而我，只是用柔软的毛笔
把你描得春山如黛，秋水横波
西方对东方想象的海市蜃楼
被你盖在我年久失修的老房子上
叠屋架床，凭空多出一层
但又无法存放我那些发霉的卷轴和理想
而我只为你画一幅水墨的特洛伊
它的城墙是一块黑色饱墨
那些驰骋或吃撑了的英雄
不过是一些小小的涂鸦
而你，早已在纷纷世代的落叶中
乘坐来自东方的光之船飘然远引
你用钢笔写下的衣领、雨和黑暗
锋利如剑桥的屋脊倾斜向上
我用毛笔把它们又写了一遍
让它们像宣纸一样柔软
可以叠成一盏盏洁白的孔明灯
越飞越高，直到变成橘色的星辰
2025年3月27日晨
马永波
Tangerine stars
—for Yongbo
橘色的星星
——答永波
as the orange lanterns float higher, as tiny boats,
we two are lifted by a gentle warmth.
Light within paper has a sallow colour,
but the energy of our light is not muted;
a permanent brightness exists
and it is never extinguished;
heat and light transferring to everything
around us. We continue on our journey.
Two tangerine stars, can be sleepy dawn sailors,
who can also move counter clockwise on the deck;
drawing the curtain of night cover
in a flux of silver stars behind us
27th March 2025, early evening
Response Poetry By Helen Pletts 海伦·普莱茨
Response Poetry Translated by Ma Yongbo 马永波
橘色的星星
——答永波
Tangerine stars
—for Yongbo
当橘色的灯笼小船一样浮升，
我们俩被一股温柔的暖意托起。
纸中的光是灰黄色的，
但我们光的能量并未衰减；
一种恒久的明亮驻留，
永远不会熄灭。
将热与光向四周的一切
传递。我们继续我们的旅程。
两颗橘色的星星，可以是昏昏欲睡的黎明水手，
也可以在甲板上逆时针移动；
在我们身后
以银色的星流揭开夜的帷幕。
2025年3月27日傍晚
海伦·普莱茨
Translation as a dialogue in the key of Yeats
By Helen Pletts 25th January 2026
There is a tiny key which opens a tiny door to a corridor which incidentally runs between Harbin and Cambridge and that key is a long dead poet by the name of Yeats. He fits perfectly into this dynamic, although in his lifetime he could hardly foresee his own significance decades later.
It is roughly mid-evening in Cambridge, well slightly North of Cambridge, and if you count back 8 hours from 7pm you will find yourself in a white Harbin morning and you will need Yeats’ key in order to do this.
There is a difficulty in that language translation, through any device, gives you a language without sentiment and gestures and until we found the Yeats’ key we used to write to each other in the language of emotionless instructions for microwave dinners, shopping lists. In the pause after one microwave instruction, I felt I justified more praise for my translation attempts, more encouragement.
At that time, we were co-translating Yongbo’s poem ‘Wander around the Barren Mountain from Afternoon till Evening on the Sunny World Poetry Day Leaving the Dull Books Behind’:
Wander around the Barren Mountain from Afternoon till Evening
on the Sunny World Poetry Day Leaving the Dull Books Behind
诗歌日阳光明媚的下午，抛开厌倦的书本，去荒山里游逛至晚
Those who venture into the mountains in the afternoon live an extra day,
they gaze up from this mountain to the higher ones,
rubbing their reddened hands, watching the changing mountain air,
or look down into the valley below
where a large white bird spreads its wings
and glides along the stream, capturing the invisible currents.
The empty mountains are silent, the first cicada chirps fading intermittently,
last year’s wild roses haven’t bloomed yet;
tiny wildflowers, no bigger than buttons, fall without wind.
The mountains are so still, it seems as if no one has ever been here,
those desolate paths don’t lead to the world but to oblivion.
In the grass, it seems as if countless grasshoppers’ legs,
are countless tiny saw-blades, sawing at various invisible things
and various enclosed locks. Poetry is ultimately futile;
it cannot reach the hearts of others,
like those continually diverging paths,
that can never return to their origin. Yet why do some still sing,
in unseen heights, in deep forests and secluded valleys,
his wind-swollen blue coat fluttering wildly?
Let’s return to grass, trees, stones, and flowing water,
they make up the mountain, while the mountain itself
lies in even more distant mountains, like a mineral vein,
silent and still. Perhaps this is the only path,
though it is now desolate and deserted,
it allows you to find peace in everything that time brings.
March 21, 2016
Retranslation 31st January 2026 Ma Yongbo 马永波 and Helen Pletts 海伦·普莱茨
诗歌日阳光明媚的下午，抛开厌倦的书本，去荒山里游逛至晚
Wander around the Barren Mountain from Afternoon till Evening
on the Sunny World Poetry Day Leaving the Dull Books Behind
下午进山的人都会多活上一天
他们从这山望着更高的山
搓着通红的大手望山气变化
或是望着下面的山谷
那里有一只白色大鸟展开翅膀
沿溪流滑翔，捕捉无形的气流
空山寂寂，最初的蝉鸣断断续续
去年的野蔷薇还没有开
钮扣大小的草花无风自落
这山静得好像从未有人来过
那些荒芜的小径不是通往人世
而是通往遗忘
草丛中似乎有众多蚱蜢的大腿
无数把小锯条在锯着各种无形之物
和各种锁头。诗歌终究是徒劳的
它通达不了他人的心灵
像那些不断分岔的岐路
再回不到原处。可为什么还有人歌唱
在看不见的高处，在深林幽谷
把鼓满风的蓝布衫猎猎振动
还是回到，草木，石头，流水
它们组成了山，而山的本身
还在更远的山里，像矿脉
保持着沉默。也许这是唯一的道路
虽然已经荒芜，杳无人迹
却让你安于时间带来的一切
2016.3.21 马永波
Yongbo’s poem ‘Wander around the Barren Mountain from Afternoon till Evening on the Sunny World Poetry Day Leaving the Dull Books Behind’, refers to a blue garment, and at this point we were calling it a ‘dress’—the recognised attire of an ancient Chinese poet, is more like a long flowing blue robe, or coat—and I had a bizarre Yeats moment, I thought of this long blue flowing robe, pinned to the stick referred to by Yeats in ‘Sailing to Byzantium’—a tattered blue ‘dress’, fluttering, from an old man’s stick, instead of an old man’s coat.
At this point the microwave dinner instructions descend into momentary chaos, as if the factory label printer is having a ‘HAL’ moment and something else gets printed instead. I write to Yongbo that he is actually ”a grumpy tattered blue ‘dress’ upon a stick” and then, happily, the microwave dinner label printer runs out of ink—from this moment on we are just two friends having fun.
Because what returns in an email from Yongbo is this inspirational picture of him as a student at Xi’an Jiaotong University and an admission that he has historically been likened to an angry black bear. Translation is the loneliest job on the planet, it is just you against the language but if you have a genius in the shape of an angry black bear on your team you have a much better chance of succeeding.
Ma Yongbo 马永波, sent this image to Helen Pletts 海伦·普莱茨
describing himself as an ‘angry black bear’ during his student years at Xi’an Jiaotong University, 1982-86, and so she has called him Bear ever since.
Now we’re in that secret Yeats’ corridor creating our own language of jocularity and we have been continuously using this access route with remarkable success:
“i think you picked up on my Yeats reference to you being “like a tattered coat on a stick” with your blue poetry-dress, when I first guessed you were an angry black bear ha ! ha ! 😊” Helen Pletts 海伦·普莱茨 to Ma Yongbo 马永波, 26th March 2024.
‘An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,’
from ‘Sailing to Byzantium’, by William Butler Yeats
The core of our partnership is a sustained, bilateral project of translation and poetic response —Dialogic Translation Poetics—and also the ramblings of Bear and Kitten, which look a bit like this:
“哈 ha
This Chinese character “哈” is the meaning of laughter, it is like a person’s mouth is smiling, the square on the left is “口“, the meaning of mouth, the right is a person’s smiling face. Therefore, Chinese characters are pictures, the so-called hieroglyphics.
Thank you for your compliment. John Ashbery is a central figure in contemporary American poetry, perhaps one of the few three or five recognised great poets. It took me 30 years to translate him, and there must be three volumes of my bilingual translation on Amazon, published by the best publishing house in China, the People’s Literature Publishing House.
If you have lower back pain, don’t sit down all the time, you should stand up and move from time to time”
Ma Yongbo 马永波 by email to Helen Pletts 海伦·普莱茨 9th April 2024
“Back muscle strain is very painful, sometimes a casual movement can cause this condition, I am familiar with it, so you have to take it seriously, do some massage, apply medicine and so on, not strenuous exercise, slow movement.
Your waist, you should also pay attention to this, you cannot sit too long, stand up from time to time, do an activity. I have a serious lumbar disease, once the attack starts, I can not get up from my bed, I can not take care of myself, and because my family is in Harbin, not in Nanjing, sometimes I think I will likely starve to death, even if I can order a takeout, I can’t get up to the door to open it, ha ha”
Ma Yongbo 马永波 by email to Helen Pletts 海伦·普莱茨 10th April 2024
I had back pain from sitting so still, attempting translation and not moving for hours. I also had no clean socks but I kept setting out every morning and every day the Chinese characters still looked the same. But the little that I could understand was breathtaking and I needed no other encouragement. I made a bit of real progress and got over excited and then tried to introduce a refined process
“What have you done, it’s worse?” was his response.
I know that my curiousness is akin to a small black kitten advancing to the top of the thinnest branches of a tree and then just mewing at the top of its voice.
“I’m just having a kitten moment” I said, and my nickname ‘Kitten’ took root.
Around about now, I had my first cancer scare. But neither of us knew for several weeks that everything was going to be ok. We tried to carry on as normal. I decided to say something about it because in my sudden panic I found I could not think straight enough to concentrate on anything, even translation. At this time Yongbo was translating my poetry into Chinese, which he continued to do, my prose poetry for example:
badger-mother
獾妈妈
I have let the lawn run long for you, little fur
run long into green disordered spires for the dusty moths
that share your night air, waver wings and thorax—
above your heart—settle and start into patches of electric light
above the handfuls of peanuts and the water bowl’s rim
caught-crescent
you white-appear, starving litter-runt
I will feed you now, clay dust diminishing the snails and slugs
that your new teeth, sprung from the home-sett, would eat
Prose Poetry by Helen Pletts 海伦·普莱茨
Prose Poetry Translated by Ma Yongbo 马永波
獾妈妈
badger-mother
为了你，小软毛，我任由草坪疯长
长出碧绿杂乱的尖顶，为了那些与你共享夜空的
灰扑扑的蛾子，飞舞的翅膀和胸膛——
高过了你的心——它们栖落，或在斑驳的灯光中惊飞
在几把花生上方，在水碗的边沿
捕捉新月
你的白影出现了，饥肠辘辘被抛弃的小家伙
我现在就来喂你，黏土粉末减少了蜗牛和蛞蝓
你在洞府长出的新牙，可以吃东西了
海伦·普莱茨
Subject: Re: badger-mother Chinese version
“oh yes, I forgot, with operation, kitten-sieve-head, you must forgive me, I am just impetus animal posing as human being x”
14th May 2024 Helen Pletts 海伦·普莱茨 by email to Ma Yongbo 马永波
Helen Pletts’ 海伦·普莱茨 poetry book ‘your eye protects the soft-toed snow drop, 2022’ was sent as a present to Yongbo, it took over 3 weeks to arrive in China, after they had given up hope of it arriving at all ! Yongbo placed it in a cherry tree on the Nanjing University campus, as during their first few months of working together Helen acquired the nickname of Kitten, after describing her own folly at over-exploring during the process of Chinese translation being akin to getting up into the fine upper branches of a tree, and getting stuck like a foolish kitten.
No Hesitation before translating poetry with Ma Yongbo
与永波一起翻译诗歌，毫不犹豫
In early moments, we’re over oceans with Homer, breaths later
we emerge on the banks of the Ganges, dipped garments
in red mud, these same garments might yet be cleansed
drifting the streams of consciousness with Alighieri Dante
already, my father’s aged words ring in my ears, read the Divine Comedy
Helen, read it, breathe it, but I stuck my head in Euripides,
it’s a solace for a solitary poet, the ancient scrapping apart of bodies
it’s the thrash of poetic-loneliness that hoped for
longed for drama, life in unshifted gears. So when in the first on-line
tussle you choose Yeats, as your hero to to bring your mirror image down
how shocked are you, that with relative ease he says he already
knows he is ‘a tattered coat upon a stick’ and then you, continue
to code crack, wisecrack ever-present, how the words flow, bridge
imaginary voids to outwit convention, jokes of the deepest joy,
mirror us through all the past and present poets, we convert them
in our heads, the relativity is endless, if communication fails us,
it’s momentary, it’s as annoying as Ashbery, shaking the dictionary
from the roots upwards to join the sky, to wait for us to ‘meet as far
from the world, as agreeing with it’.
Note: The last sentence is quoted from Ashbery’s ‘Some Trees’.
Response Poetry by Helen Pletts 海伦·普莱茨
Response Poetry Translated by Ma Yongbo 马永波
与永波一起翻译诗歌，毫不犹豫
No Hesitation before translating poetry with Ma Yongbo
起初，我们和荷马一起越过海洋，然后瞬息间
出现在恒河岸边，将衣服浸染于
红色的淤泥，它们也许还需要清洗
和但丁一起在意识流中瓢荡
父亲多年前的话已在我耳边响起，读《神曲》吧
海伦，读吧，吸纳它，但我一头钻在欧里庇得斯里边，
这是对一个诗人的慰藉，将古尸拆解成碎片
这是我所希望的诗意孤独的摔打
渴望戏剧，活在一成不变的齿轮里。于是第一次线上争论
你就选择叶芝作为你的英雄，来打倒你的镜像
你多么让人震惊，他轻松地说他已经知道
他是“棍子上的破衣服”，然后你继续
破解密码，妙语百出，词语怎样流动，架起桥梁
让想象的虚空胜过惯例，最深沉的欢乐的玩笑，
通过所有过去和现在的诗人映照我们，在头脑中
转化他们，相对性永无止境，如果我们沟通失败，
那也是暂时的，就像阿什贝利一样烦人，摇晃着字典
从树根向上与天空联结，等待我们“相遇
似乎远离世界，又似乎与之默契”。
注解：末句引自阿什贝利的《一些树》。
海伦·普莱茨
Helen Pletts 海伦·普莱茨, 16th July 2025, Cambridge, UK, Planet Earth, The Universe
On 24th January 2026, Ma Yongbo 马永波 shared some great news:
CHINESE BAGUA POETRY SERIES LINK HERE https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/qNBc_W3Wb1fzUqi-efGBKg
“BAGUA POETRY SERIES, a collection of research materials on contemporary Chinese poetry, has included my poetry volume ‘Surface Snow’. This volume includes 150 of my poems in total, covering my representative works in the new century as well as new poems created in 2024 and 2025. Surprisingly, 34 of them were written to, or in response to Helen Pletts 海伦·普莱茨.
我们对黑暗了解多少？what do we know of darkness?
我们的月亮 Our Own Moon
蜡烛的诸种比喻 Various Metaphors for Candles
在剑桥的墓地读诗 Reading Poetry in a Cambridge Graveyard
衣领研究 A Study of Collars
猫头鹰研究 Owl Studies
香蕉 Banana
冬夜的舞蹈 Dance on a Winter Night
父亲的房子 Father’s House
冬天的蜂箱 Beehive in Winter
当你发现冬天时 When I discover winter
座钟 The Clock?
秋天退潮了Autumn Ebbs Forwards
双体船——给海伦·普莱茨的生日诗 Catamaran—A Birthday Poem for Helen Pletts
美人鱼，你的钱包丢了 Mermaid, Your Purse Is Lost
龙抬头或惊蛰 Dragon Raising Its Head, or Awakening of Worms
跑吧，海伦，跑吧——戏赠 “Run, Helen, Run”—A Playful Dedication
沿河散步时想到隐喻的有害性 On the Harmfulness of Metaphor
我们把雨视为盟友 We Take the Rain as Our Ally
一个春天的黑暗停顿下来 A Spring Darkness Halting
观海伦诸多赠诗有感 Reflections on Reading Helen’s Many Poems for Me
最后的母亲之光 The Last Light of Mother
你停下笔，看着花园 You Stop Writing and Look at the Garden
母亲的花园 Mother’s Garden
春天的自在 Freedom in Spring
水之名The Name of Water
花园里无人打扰的地方 A Place in the Garden that No One Disturbs
作为一个人和一个地方的海伦 Helen as a Person and a Place
我们已经抵达过很多个远方 We Have Reached Many Distant Places
万物的不朽 the immortalisation of everything
在绿色与蓝色之间 Between Green and Blue
汇流 Confluence
那个孩子睡在仍在说话的房子里 That Boy Sleeping in the Still-speaking-house
坐在秋天的梨树下 Under the Autumnal Pear Tree
The collector of this huge material archive is Shi Zhongren 世中人, a poet based in Beijing. Having dedicated over forty years to collecting and collating materials on underground Chinese poetry, he is a preeminent curator of non-official literary archives. This collection has become an indispensable reference database for sinologists researching contemporary Chinese poetry.
Bagua Poetry Series includes some of my poet friends, Tong Xiaofeng, 仝晓锋,
Shenqi 沈奇, Yizi 逸子, etc.
When I received my copy, I felt even more delighted than I did when my books were published by official presses!”
Ma Yongbo 马永波, 18th January 2026
‘Surface Snow’ by Ma Yongbo 马永波, published by the Bagua Poetry Series. Many of the poems selected for ‘Surface Snow’ are also published in Chinese and English in International Times.
‘Our Own Moon’—to Helen Pletts 海伦·普莱茨 by Ma Yongbo马永波, written in response to ‘the moon is the white place if the sea of poetry’ by Helen Pletts 海伦·普莱茨 to Ma Yongbo 马永波
‘Our Own Moon—for Helen Pletts’ by Ma Yongbo | IT
The essential BAGUA POETRY SERIES—Shi Zhongren 世中人 has been collecting and collating materials on underground Chinese poetry for over forty years
All images under individual copyright © to either Ma Yongbo 马永波 or Helen Pletts 海伦·普莱茨
.