Chen Hsiu-chen

Chen Hsiu-chen, a Taiwanese poet, graduated from Department of Chinese Literature in Tamkang University and has been served as an editor in newspaper and magazines, now is one of the editor members of “Li Poetry Sociaty”. Her publications include essay “A Diary About My Son, 2009”, poetry “String Echo in Forest, 2010”, ”Mask, 2018”, “Uncertain Landscape, 2017”, “Tamsui poetry, 2018”and “BoneFracture, 2018” , Mandarin-English-Spanish trilingual “Promise, 2017” as well as Mandarin-English “My Beloved Neruda,2020”.

Her poems have been selected into Mandarin-English-Spanish trilingual anthologies “Poetry Road Between Two-Hemispheres, 2015” and “Voices from Taiwan, 2017”, Spanish “Opus Testimoni, 2017”, Italian “Dialoghi, 2017” and “Quaderni di traduzione, 2018”, as well as English “Whispers of Soflay, Vol. 2, 2018” and “Amaravati Poetic Prism, 2018”. Her poems have been also translated into Bengali, Albanian, Turkish and the like.

She participated Formosa International Poetry Festivals in Taiwan held in 2015~2019 annually, Kathak International Poets Summit in Dhaka, Bangladesh,

2016, International Poetry Festival “Ditët e Naimit” in Tetova, Macedonia, 2016, Capulí Vallejo y su Tierra in Peru, 2017, International Poetry Festival of Sidi Bou Saïd Tunisia, 2018, “Tras las Huellas del Poeta”in Chile, 2018, 3rd International Poetry Festival in Hanoi, Vietnam, 2019, 6thIasi International Poetry Festival in Romania, 2019, as well as Primer Festival Internacional de Poesía por Ediciones El nido del fénix, 2019. She was awarded with estrella matutina by Festival of Capulí Vallejo y su Tierra in Peru, 2018. Lebanon Naji Naaman Literary Prizes 2020.

Winter II

For welcome the snow

the leaves

leave the vacancy of

whole mountain.

Onion

Dissect your heart

drip my tears

a dilemma of love

Diving Accident

As I submerged into water,

someone cried for help

someone threw a life buoy

someone jumped into water regardless of danger.

At last, they found

I was simply challenging myself

the extreme limit of diving capability.

When I dropped into water again

someone cheered me going on

someone waited for me with bouquet

no one in the cheer team knew

I was losing my diving ability.

White Deer––My Beloved Neruda

Three years ago

at Sun Moon Lake

I heard with enlarging ears

the recital by exotic poets.

Among the floral fragrance

my trembled hands capture

a poetic white deer

hidden within luxuriant leaves.

At present

I read my poem softly

and surprise

to capture

the white deer lost once.

Oh, my Neruda,

I am afraid

the white deer that regained

would be again trapped into a cloudy wrong path,

I am afraid

my white deer will indulge in the clouds.

The clouds are raised from

two lakes of my eyes.

White deer, oh, white deer

don't give up me once more

without regard.

The Eyes in Santiago––My Beloved Neruda

The eyes are everywhere

as the narks arranged

here and there.

Like overbearing eyes of

a strict lover

in the inner room or garden

to test whether love is

persistent or not.

The eyes seem

being restrained by desire

to look for

a blind love.

Oh, my Neruda,

there are so many eyes,

eye, eye, eye.

Which one is mine?

Which one is yours?

Can we combine to form a pair of eyes

staring at the same star?

I deliberate to capture you

but afraid, instead,

to be captured by you.

*In La Chascona, the former residence of Neruda, there are many

totems of eyes indoors and outdoors.

Translated by Lee Kuei–shien