November 11, 2023—The American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) is pleased to announce the winner of the 2023 Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize. Starting in 2009, the Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize recognizes the importance of Asian translation for international literature and promotes the translation of Asian works into English. Stryk was an internationally acclaimed translator of Japanese and Chinese Zen poetry, renowned Zen poet himself, and former professor of English at Northern Illinois University. This year’s judges are Soje, Dong Li, and Paige Aniyah Morris.
This year’s winner was announced at the Awards Ceremony held during ALTA’s 46th annual conference, ALTA46: The Place of Translation, held in Tucson, AZ from November 8-11, 2023. The ceremony, held on Saturday, November 11, included a spotlight on the 2023 shortlist. Poet, translator, and ALTA mentor Jack Jung bestowed the award on behalf of this year’s judges, and accepted the award on the winner’s behalf since she was unable to attend the conference in person. The winner will be awarded a $6,000 prize and a commemorative plaque.
Winner: 2023 Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize
In the Same Light: 200 Poems for Our Century
From the Migrants & Exiles of the Tang Dynasty
By 37 Tang Poets
Translated from Chinese by Wong May
The Song Cave | Carcanet
This is what the judges had to say about the winner:
With an immediacy sans memory and a bracing vibrancy in new forms, In the Same Light: 200 Poems for Our Century From the Migrants & Exiles of the Tang Dynasty is visionarily rendered from Classical Chinese to contemporary English by the poet Wong May. These ancient poems carve out a pressing and prescient cartography of feelings, be it the keen ears of grief, “the refugees of no camp,” the petty ailments, the dour colors of war, or the long history of tears. “The question—Are we translating poetry or a poem?” asks Wong May in her informed and inspired afterword. Here, these exiled sages speak to us in our time, and we forget the language, all standing “In the light / Of one lamp.” This collection is illumination.
About the winner:
Wong May was born in 1944 in China’s wartime capital, Chongqing. She was brought up in Singapore by her mother, a classical Chinese poet; studied English literature at the University of Singapore. From 1966 to 1968 she was at the Iowa Writers Workshop. She left the USA in 1969 & has lived mainly in Europe. Her fourth book of poems Picasso’s Tears was published by Octopus Poetry in 2014. Harcourt Brace brought out her three previous collections. Whilst in Berlin on a Literarisches Colloquium Fellowship in 1972 she worked with Hans Christoph Buch Der Einsturz der Lei-Feng Pagode a translation of Lü Hsun and her Wannsee Poems, translated by the poet Nicholas Born, appeared in the LCB edition in 1973. Wong May lives in Dublin, paints under the name Ittrium Coey.
[Image description: Wong May in her study, winter 2022, with her coat on.]
The 2024 Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize submissions portal will be opened in January 2024.