The Emperor of Poetry Translated from Conquered Nations

Chen Dongdong was born in Shanghai, where he has spent most of his life. He began writing poetry in 1980 while an undergraduate in the Chinese department at Shanghai Normal University, and he has been the editor of several unofficial literary journals, including Works (1982–1984), Tendency (1988–1991), and Southern Poetry Journal (1992–1994). Since 2005 he has been chief organizer the Three Month Three Poetry Festival, publishing three volumes anthologizing the work. He co-edited Another Kind of Nation: An Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Poetry in English Translation (Talisman House, 2007), with US-based poet Zhang Er, and he has published over a dozen books of his own, including the poetry collections Summer Book • Unbanned Book (2010), Tourist Map (2013), and Flowing Water (prose poems, 2000), as well as the essay collections Black Mirror (2014) and Words and Phrases from Writing (2015). He now divides his time between Shanghai and Shenzhen.