Wai-lim Yip
{{Short description|Taiwanese poet, translator, critic, editor and professor}}
{{family name hatnote|Ye/Yeh/Yip|lang=Chinese}}
Wai-lim Yip ({{zh|葉維廉}}; Jyutping: Jip6 Wai4-lim4, pinyin: Yè Wéilián; born June 20, 1937), is a Taiwanese poet, translator, critic, editor, and professor of Chinese and comparative literature at UC San Diego. He received his PhD in comparative literature from Princeton University. He is also a visiting teacher at China's Peking University and Tsinghua University.
Life
Yip was born in Guangdong province. At the age of 12, he moved to Hong Kong, where he started writing poetry and was active on the poetry scene.Michelle Yeh and N. G. D. Malmqvist, Frontier Taiwan: An Anthology of Modern Chinese Poetry (Columbia University Press, 2001: {{ISBN|0-231-11846-5}}), p. 231. He graduated from National Taiwan University (BA, 1959) and went on to National Taiwan Normal University (MA, 1961), where he did a thesis on T.S. Eliot and translated "The Waste Land."Wai-lim Yip, "Thank You, Paul," in A Community of Writers: Paul Engle and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, ed. Robert Dana (University of Iowa Press, 1999: {{ISBN|0-87745-668-2}}), p. 107.
In 1963 he went to the United States to attend the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, whose director, Paul Engle, went to Taipei to negotiate permission for Yip's wife Tzu-mei and their daughter to leave Taiwan;Yip, "Thank You, Paul," p. 107. he received an MFA in 1964. He then did graduate work at Princeton University, receiving a PhD in comparative literature in 1967. In the same year he joined the faculty of University of California, San Diego, with which he has been affiliated ever since.
In 1970 he returned to National Taiwan University as a visiting professor of comparative literature. In 1980 he joined the Department of English at the Chinese University of Hong Kong as a visiting professor. Since then, he has visited mainland China many times, teaching comparative literature at Peking University and Tsinghua University.
Yip's poetic theory, relating modernist poetry to Taoist aesthetics, has been very influential in Taiwan.Yeh and Malmqvist, Frontier Taiwan, p. 231. In recent years he has been the object of considerable attention in China, with exhibitions of his archives and conferences devoted to his poetry, as well as publication of his Complete Works in nine volumes.Jerome Rothenberg, [http://poemsandpoetics.blogspot.com/2009/08/wai-lim-yip-from-dialogues-after-photos.html Wai-lim Yip], August 24, 2009.
Works
- Ezra Pound's Cathay, Princeton University Press, 1969.
- Modern Chinese Poetry: Twenty Poets from the Republic of China, 1955-65, University of Iowa Press, 1970.
- Chinese Poetry: Major Modes and Genres, U. C. Press/Duke University Press, 1976; {{cite book|title=Chinese Poetry: Major Modes and Genres|publisher=Duke University Press|year=1997|url=https://archive.org/details/chinesepoetryant00yipw/|url-access=registration|edition=2nd|via=Internet Archive}}
- Reading the Modern and the Postmodern: Meditations on Living Spaces and Cultural Spaces, Taipei: Tatung, 1992.
- Diffusion of Distances: Dialogues Between Chinese and Western Poetics, University of California Press, 1993. ([http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft9w1009r8;query=;brand=ucpress UC Press E-Books])
- Between Landscapes, Santa Fe: Pennywhistle Press, 1994 [poems in English].
- Between/Entre, New Native Press, 2008 [trilingual collection of Yip's poetry].
- Translation of a poem by Chen Lin (Han dynasty) called "Water the Horses at a Breach in the Great Wall".{{citation needed|date=April 2025}}
References
External links
- [http://literature.ucsd.edu/faculty/wyip.cfm UCSD faculty page]
- [http://www.dayaculture.com/en/prize.php?do=viewmember&id=152 Da Ya Culture Bio-Bibliographical Summary]
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Yip, Wai-Lim}}
Category:Modern Chinese poetry
Category:Chinese literary critics
Category:Writers from Zhongshan
Category:Educators from Guangdong
Category:University of California, San Diego faculty
Category:Academic staff of the National Taiwan University
Category:20th-century Chinese poets