New work on Tang poet set to hit stands

Chloe Garcia Roberts, managing editor at Harvard Review, has completed her translation of the works of Chinese poet Li Shangyin (813-58) and the book will debut this month.

This is the second time she has translated Li's works.

Her previous book of the poet, Derangements of My Contemporaries: Miscellaneous Notes, was marketed in June 2014 as part of New Directions Poetry Pamphlet Series and awarded a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant. It takes dual perspectives to translate Li's works: representing his Chinese metaphors and embodying the visual effects and sensuality of his original writing in English, the major Chinese daily newspaper, The China Press, quoted her as saying.

Li was a poet in the late Tang Dynasty (618-907), excelling in political satire and odes to love. The obscure meanings paralleled with effusive emotional depiction imbued in his works intrigued Roberts to find the truth, igniting her desire and sustaining her efforts to complete the two books in a span of half a decade.

In the fall of 2017, between the publication of these two books, her translation of Chinese writer Cao Wenxuan's children's book, Feather, was printed by Archipelago Books. She is also the author of the book of poetry, The Reveal (Noemi Press, 2015), which was published as part of the Akrilika Series for innovative Latino writing.

Chloe received her Master of Fine Arts degree in poetry from the University of Oregon where she was awarded a FLAS fellowship from the US Department of Education. She lives in Boston and is a contributing editor for The Critical Flame besides serving Harvard Review.