inwardness
drawing on influences from the Scottish ballad tradition and the Gaelic bards
Saffron Jack has never fitted in wherever he’s been
but the poems reach out to a broader sense of self and belonging
the impact of climate change
Impossible Paradise: Selected Poems by Chen Yuhong, translated by George O'Connell and Diana Shi <b> Poetry Book Society Translation Choice Spring 2026 </b> Japan inwardnessRegarding the textures and substance of Chen Yuhong's poetry, the poet's urbane and cosmopolitan sensibilities expand its international reach. Her love for and knowledge of music its instruments, terminology, and compositional forms endow a richly metaphorical lexicon to conjure mood, angles of thought or light, animal presence, tides of summer, spring, or fall. Similarly, her grasp of time's elasticity, its sliding scales, invests many of her poems.