Yi Lei ( Chinese: 伊蕾, 1951–2018), born Sun Guizhen, was a Chinese poet of the 20th and early 21st centuries. ^[1] She first came to prominence with the publication of her poem, "A Single Woman’s Bedroom", in 1987 in People's Literature magazine. ^[2]

Biography

Early years

Yi Lei was born in Tianjin in 1951, the oldest of five children. ^[2] Her father was a steelworker father and her mother did embroidery work. ^[2] The family lived in close knit quarters in, "a brick-and-tile building with a handful of other families." ^[2] According to The New Yorker, "as a child, Yi Lei spent a lot of time with her uncle, a clerk at a pharmaceutical company who was infatuated with literature. By grade school, she was reading Pushkin and felt a kind of kinship with the poet. Her schooling came to a halt with the Cultural Revolution, in 1966." ^[2] At that point, as part of a "reeducation movement," she was sent to the countryside. ^[2] By the early seventies, Yi Lei had become a radio broadcaster at a Luyuan steel factory in rural Hebei Province. ^{[3] [2]} There, she started to, "write poems set in farmlands and factories." ^[2]

Education and Career

While in Luyuan, Yi Lei shared an apartment with a close friend, Li Yarong. ^[3] When Li Yarong met Yi Lei, she had just lost her fiancé to leukemia. ^{[2] [3]} It was only after her fiancé's death that she begin to publish under the name, 'Yi Lei.' ^[3]

Yi Lei studied creative writing at the Lu Xun Academy and subsequently received a BA in Chinese literature from Peking University. ^[1] In 1992, Yi Lei moved to Moscow, only returning to Tianjin in 2002. ^[2]

Yi Lei published eight poetry collections in her lifetime; her work has been translated into Japanese, French, Italian, Russian, and English. ^[1] In addition to her work as a poet, Yi Lei worked as a reporter for the Liberation Army, and as a staff member for the newspaper The Railway Corps. ^[1]

Awards

Yi Lei was a recipient of the Zhuang Zhong Wen Literature Prize (also Zhuang Chongwen | 庄重文文学奖), a prize that is awarded every other year to a writer under the age of 40. ^{[1] [4]}

Death

Yi Lei died suddenly of a heart attack while on a 2018 trip to Iceland. ^[2]

Influences

Yi Lei discovered the poems of Walt Whitman in her late twenties and a line of his ("I will not make a poem nor the least part of a poem but has reference to the soul"), "became lifelong guidance and sent her off the path of communist motifs." ^[2]

Translation

Poet Tracy K. Smith asked Yi Lei, "through an intermediary," as to whether, "she might translate her work with something less than literal fidelity, aiming for a 'similar spirit or feeling for readers of American English.'" ^[3] After some back and forth, Yi Lei gave Smith permission to do just that. ^[3] The two poets met in January, 2014 at a restaurant in New York City's Chinatown. ^[2] Smith worked with Changtai Bi, a longtime friend of Yi Lei's who taught English at a local college in Tianjin - Bi would translate Yi Lei's poems literally, Smith would then rework them to be more faithful sense-wise and Changtain Bi would then translate Smith's work back into Mandarin for Yi Lei's approval. ^{[3] [2]} This process was unexpectedly cut short by Yi Lei's death in 2018, but her works, as translated/interpreted by Smith and Changtai Bi were published under the title of, My Name Will Grow Wide Like a Tree, the first major collection of Yi Lei's poems translated into English. ^{[3] [5]} It was shortlisted for the 2021 Griffin Poetry Prize. ^[5]

References

Translations into English

• Tracy K. Smith and Changtai Bi (translators) (2020). My Name Will Grow Wide Like a Tree (Graywolf Press, 2020). ISBN  978-1-64445-040-6.

External links

Poems available in translation online (note that some are more like interpretations rather than literal translations):

• A Single Woman’s Bedroom (one of Yi Lei's most famous poem)
• Nature Aria
• Nude