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Yang Lian was born in Switzerland in 1955 and grew up in Beijing. He began writing when he was sent to the countryside in the 1970s. On his return to Beijing he became one of the founders of the 'Misty' school of contemporary Chinese poetry. Among other things, Yang Lian is known for his poem sequences and long poems which display a profound understanding of, and creative links with, Classical Chinese poetry.

His poems became well-known and influential inside and outside of China in the 1980s, especially when his sequence 'Norilang' was criticized by the Chinese government during the 'Anti-Spiritual Pollution' movement 1983. He was not able to publish anything in 1984-1985 while he started to compose his first book-length poem YI (completed at 1989).

Yang Lian was invited to visit Australia and New Zealand in 1988 and became a poet in exile after his books were banned in China after the Tiananmen massacre. Since that time, he has continued to write and speak out as a highly individual voice in world literature, politics and culture. 

Yang Lian has written fifteen "projects" (his way to call "books") of poems, two collections of poetical proses and many essays (selected into several selections) in Chinese.

His work has also been translated into more than thirty languages, including English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Arabic, Central and Eastern European languages. 

His work has been reviewed as "like MacDiarmid meets Rilke with Samurai sword drawn!", "one of the most representative voices of Chinese literature" and "one of the great world poets of our era'".

Yang Lian has been elected two times of a board member of PEN International in 2008 and 2011.

Yang Lian was awarded the Flaiano International Poetry Prize (Italy, 1999) and his Where the Sea Stands Still: New Poems was Poetry Books Society Recommended Translation (UK, 1999).

2012, Yang Lian has won Nonino International Literature Prize in Italy, the juries of the prize were presided by V S Naipaul.

2013, Yang Lian’s "Concentric Circles Trilogy" (YI, Concentric Circles and Narrative Poem) won the first issue of Tianduo Award for Long Poems in China.

2013, Yang Lian has been invited to become a member of The Norwegian Academy for Literature and Freedom of Expression.

2014, Yang Lian won the International Capri Prize 2014, a well-known international poetry prize.

2015, Yang Lian has won four poetry prizes in China including "Li Bai Poetry Nominating Prize"; "Zuo Pin" (Works) Magazine’s Prize for Sequence; The First Long Poem Prize (Fo Shan City, China); "Da Kun Lun" prize for the Outstanding Contribution to Poetry.

2016, Yang Lian was awarded The 2016 Pacific International Poetry Prize in Taiwan.

2017, Narrative Poem, Yang Lian’s autographical book-length poem selected as a recommended translation by Poetry book Society in UK, as well as won the English PEN Award; He won also Shanghai Literature Magazine Prize for Poetry.

2018, Yang Lian won the first prize for Poetry of "He Ze Du Lin Cup", Shanghai, China; 2018 Premio International NordSud (2018 NordSud International Prize) for Literature, Italy; The award of Outstanding Poetry in "Beijing Literature" magazine, China; The 2018 Janus Pannonius International Poetry Grand in Hungary; and the 2018 L'Aquila International Literature Prize, Italy. His long poem "Concentric Circles" in Swedish translation ("Koncentriska Cirklar") been selected into the "Litteraturtoppen" and the Daily News's 5 best poetry books of the year.

2019, Yang Lian won "46th Sulmona Prize 2019 - Antonio Pelino National Prize for Culture" in Italy; and Ett lyckligt spökes anteckningar, his selection of poems in Swedish translation (Note of A Blissful Ghost) been selected into the "Litteraturtoppen", and His long poem "Concentric Circles" in Swedish translation ("Koncentriska Cirklar") been selected into the "Litteraturtoppen" for the second time. And he has won The Beijing Literature Magazine's Prize for Poetry of the year.

2020, Yang Lian won the "Jiu Ge Prize" of the first Miluo Literature Prize in China.

2021, Yang Lian won the first Sarah McGuire Prize for Poetry in Translation held by Poetry in Translation Centre, UK.

2023, A Tower Built Downward, Yang Lian’s collection of poems in English translation, won the English PEN Award.

2024, Yang Lian won The Zbigniew Herbert International Literary Award (Poland). A Tower Built Downwards, Yang Lian’s collection of poems in English translation, has been selected into the shortlisted books of the shortlist for the inaugural PEN Heaney Prize.

2026，Yang Lian won the LericiPea International Lifetime Achievement Award, Lerici, Italy.

Yang Lian’s books in Chinese published in Mainland China, Taiwan and overseas. Among them, three volumes of works, including the poems and proses 1982-1997 and one volume of new works for 1998-2002, published in between 1999 and 2003; A Tower Built Downward, a selection of Essays, published in 2009; Questions about the Demon Taotie, a selection of New poems and Yang Lian’s translation of International poets’ works, published in 2014. And Yang Lian’s Completed Works 1978 – 2015 (nine volumes) was planned to be published in Mainland but they were delayed until 2025 because of the censorships. Yang Lian has published totally 9 books of poems and prose in Taiwan between 1994 and 2019.

Yang Lian’s Narrative Poem, his autobiographical book-length poem, written during 2006 – 2010 and published in Beijing in 2011, but the first edition of 3000 copies has been took back and destroyed by Chinese Officials because of "Reality Elegy", part of the poem, was subjected on Tiananmen Massacre in Beijing, 1989, however, the book "marked the new altitude of Contemporary Chinese Poetry", reviewed by Tang Xiaodu, one of the most important poetry-critics.

Among his books of poems in English translation, his most representative works include Where the Sea Stands Still, a collection of short poems and sequence, (Bloodaxe Books,UK, 1999); Yi, a book-length poem (Green Integer, USA, 2002); Concentric Circles, a book-length poem (Bloodaxe Books UK, 2005); Riding Pisces: Poems From Five Collections (Shearsman Books, UK, 2008); Lee Valley Poems – A project of poems and translation (Bloodaxe Books, UK, 2010); Narrative Poem (Bloodaxe Books, 2017); Anniversary Snow (Shearsman Books, 2019); His latest book in English translation is A Tower Built Downwards (Bloodaxe Books, 2023).

Yang Lian’s most important work so far is "Concentric Circles Trinity", including three book-length poems YI, Concentric Circles and Narrative Poem. It will become "Four-part series" when Long Day Looking Back, the latest book-length poem has been written, to be published (Bloodaxe). The four books have crossed 40 years of his life and the pure writing-time was more than 17 years. Yang Lian is also a Chinese translator of George Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984, they were commissioned by "Writers List" (Zuo Jia Bang) in China, he has completed his translation in 2018, when George Orwell has been formally banned in China, therefore his “Orwell in Chinese” could be published in Taiwan only.

Yang Lian, together with Mang Ke and Tang Xiaodu, has found the Survivors Poetry Magazine in Beijing 1988, the magazine has been reviewed das "The witness of Contemporary Chinese Poetry" and continued now (www.surpoetry.com). Yang Lian is one of its two chief editors.

Among the books Yang Lian as an editor, there was Jade Ladder (co-edited with the Scottish poet W. N. Herbert together with Brian Holton and Qin Xaioyu), an Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Poetry (1978 -- 2008) in English, published by Bloodaxe Books in 2012. The Third Shore, (co-edited with W. N. Herbert are co-editors), the bilingual anthology of Chinese – English poets in mutual translation, publish by Shearsman Books in UK and published by The Eastern Chinese Formal University Press in China, 2013. Himalayas, (co-edited with Sudeep Sen), an anthology of Chinese-Indian poets’ translation project, published by AARK Arts (India) and Sheasman Books (UK). Yang Lian has been invited to be writer in residence by many international institutions, among others, he has been a fellow in Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (2012 - 2013), DAAD (Berlin programme, 1991), Yaddo Arts Colony, Amherst College, Bard College (USA), Cove Park (UK), MEET (France), University of Sydney (Australia), University of Auckland (New Zealand) ...etc.

Yang Lian was invited to be on the jury for the Lettre-Ulysess Award for the art of Reportage (Germany), International contest of Essays (Germany), and President of the Jury of "The Crystal Vilenica Award, 2008", as well as having been invited to be an adviser of “Free The Word” (International Literature Festival of PEN), International Literature Festival of Berlin, Poetry International Taipei…etc. Between 2005 -2012, he was a founder and director of "Unique Mother Tongue", a privately organized international seminar series based on London (2005 - 2012). Between 2012 -2016, he was the artistic director of Artsbj.com, a privately owned website, and started "Arts.com International Chinese Poetry Prize", it was an important base to discover Chinese "migrant workers’ poetry" that has become an international phenomenon since then. Between 2014 and 2023, Yang Lian is invited to be a distinguished professor and a writer in residency by University of Shantou, China, and to against Xi Jinping’s regime publicly, he (together with YoYo, his wife) has quit the job.

Yang Lian lives in both London and Berlin now.

Yang Lian’s website: www.yanglian.net

Yang Lian's Facebook: Lian Yang

SELECTED REVIEWS ABOUT YANG LIAN

(A Tower Built Downwards) offers us a clear lens on the lived reality of a haunted world of exile and displacement. Steeped in classical Chinese poetry, with a spirited understanding of historical forces, Yang offers us elegy as a sublime art in a fallen world.’

- The shortlist review for the inaugural PEN Heaney Prize (2024)

 

If is true that a poem can be deeply disturbing, even shocking, to the reader while also being uplifting due to its prowess, then this poem (Researching Evil) is proof.

- Jan Wagner

 

(A Tower Built Downwards) is a masterpiece speaking to us out of "the gale of History.

- Fiona Sampson, The Guardian

 

Yang’s unique, almost prophetic voice, makes Anniversary Snow all the more compelling. Not only for its poetic ambition, but also for its dark use of language, its political force and its philosophical teachings. It is a multi-layered, lyrically complex collection that explores many of Yang’s main reoccupations as an artist and poet, including themes of exile, migration, friendship, the power of art, history, music and language, as well as the limitless source of inspiration drawn from Chinese culture.

- 2021 The Sarah McGuire Prize Announcement

 

With a western and modernist sensibility, with an extraordinary imaginative and metaphorical language, he (Yang Lian) reinterprets the themes of the ancient Chinese civilization, almost shamanic, opening them to the existential problems and tensions of the modern world. His poetry of universal value thus becomes the best possible bridge between Chinese tradition and Western culture.

- 46° Premio Sulmona 2019 - Premio Nazionale per la Cultura "Antonio Pelino"

 

'The poetic works of Yang Lian, International Nonino Prize 2012, is one of heights of Contemporary Chinese thought. Grounded to the millenary root of his culture, he reinterprets it reinventing and opening it to the tensions of Contemporaneity, touching in his lines all the great questions of our existence and reminding us that “poetry is our only mother tongue”. He lives and writes as an exile not only from his land, pushing his view to the extreme limit. An absolute exile and distant profound poet far beyond our space-time. '

- The Motivation of Nonino International Literature Prize 2012, the jury of the prize, presided by V. S. Naipaul (Nobel Laureate for Literature 2001)

 

'Yang Lian is one of the most astonishing poets I've read for years. He has a westernist, modernist sensibility allied with an ancient Chinese, almost shamanistic one. He can both excite and frighten you - like MacDiarmid meets Rilke with Samurai sword drawn!'

- W.N. Herbert, Scotsman

 

'He continues his work bridging Chinese tradition to western modernism. The scope of his creative imagination is astoundingSYang Lian is one of the great world poets of our era'

- Klaus Rifberg, Edinburgh Review

 

'Yang Lian distinguishes himself in representing the pain of life caught in between historic eras...a new version of an old issue for world literature as well as Chinese literature is proposed: how to continue writing, relying on individual rather than enforced communal inspiration'

- Allen Ginsberg

 

'It wouldn't surprise me if he became a future Nobel Laureate. His style is one of extraordinary grandeur and ambitionSWithout question, the sequence Where the Sea Stands Still has a monumental drive, a sensuous strength and intellectual clarity; it could prove as enduring an achievement as Montale's Xenia or Elytis's The Axion Esti'

- David Morley, Stand

 

'Yang Lian stretches poetic language to its linguistic extreme.'

- Orbis Quaeterly International Literary Journal (No. 134)

 

'Yang Lian's intricate, shocking and baroque masterpiece Concentric Circles is superbly rendered by Brian Holton with Agnes Chan.'

- W N Herbert: Book Of The Year, Scotland on Sunday

 

‘Yang Lian …… the most important voice of Modern Chinese lyrics.’

- Irmy Schweiger: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zietung.

 

Those lonely Tang dynasty poets may be Yang’s original blues brother, but he’s much a modernist and symbolist in the vein of Mallarme or Rimbaud, whose famous “The Drunken Boat” is recalled in one poem…… Yang Lian’s work is rooted not in geography but his own imagination……to exist in Yang’s lines can be a gorgeous but frustrating adventure.

- Tim Kindseth: Time Magazine.

 

This hauntingly beautiful collection, with its Chinese classical sensibility wedded to modernist methods, is a remarkable addition to London's literature of exile.

- Boyd Tonkin: The Independent.

 

The poem’s timelessness, which equally can be conceived as a receptivity to all times…… it is not some withheld knowledge but a lure toward the unpredictable: “Forever excavating the darkness behind the eyes” (“Thunder 7”, YI)…… Yang Lian points out that exile and dissent are simply the condition of Poetry.

- Jeffrey Twitchell-Waas: Chicago Review.

 

It is Fascinating how Yang Lian’s poems uncover memory, explore archaic depth and create a timeless space related to Taoist “emptiness”.

- Ilma Rakusa: Neue Zürcher Zeitung

 

（Narrative Poem）.....the poems in this dual-text collection are lush with distinct, shaped images that sit like leaves on a tree, gathering and expressing the energy of a single, connected vitality.

- US's World Literature Today (Jan 2018)

 

（Narrative Poem） this final elegy drews together the threads of the elegies so far.

– Lucas Klein: Translation and Literature 27, (No2, 2018)

 

In Narrative poem, Yang Lian turns his first-hand experiences of these man-made catastrophes......into a radically strange montage. Narrative Poem would read as elegiac except that we are repeatedly made to regard that mode as premature......This is what Yang Lian calls a “poem’s affront”. Harm does its thing — and if it then doubles back to do it again, so too must poetry. Both will get there at the same time.

– NAN Z DA: TLS (Aug, 2018)

 

“Im Einklang mit dem Tod”, Yang Lian’s collection of essays, which is among the most insightful things to be read about China in German.

– Andreas Platthaus (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Dec. 30, 2025)