Tian Yuan

Poet, translator. Born in 1965 in Henan Province, China, he first came to Japan as a government-sponsored student early in the 1990's. In 2003 he received a Doctorate in Literature for his study of the poetry of Shuntaro Tanikawa. He now teaches in Tohoku University in Japan, and is chiefly engaged in the translation of contemporary Japanese poetry. His books of translation into Chinese so far include Selected Poems of Shuntaro Tanikawa (2 volumes) and An Alien: Selected Poems of Takashi Tsujii. He has also translated some poems of Ryuichi Tamura and Katsuei Kitazono. He has published six volumes of his own poetry in Chinese and English. He has been awarded literary prizes for poetry in China, America and Taiwan, and in 2001 he was awarded the first "Japanese Literary Award for Foreign Students". His book of poetry in Japanese And So the Shore Was Born (Soshite Kishi ga Tanjo shita) was published in 2004. He is the editor of the 3-volume Selected Poems of Shuntaro Tanikawa (Shueisha, 2005). He also edited the Japanese version of Anthology of Chinese New Generation Poets translated by Shin Takeuchi. Last year, Selected Poems of Tian Yuan (Renmin Wenxue, 2007) in Chinese was published.

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