Zhou Zhanlin, born in 1964, is a member of Chinese Writers Association, Editor-in-Chief of Chinese-poetry.com, Deputy Secretary General of the Organizing Committee of Ten-thousand-Mile Chinese Poetry Travel, Vice President of World Poetic Tourism Alliance, Vice President of Chinese Modern Poetry Research Institute, Vice President and Secretary General of Chinese Scholars Painting and Calligraphy Institute, Editor-in-Chief of Chinese Scholars Painting and Calligraphy Magazine, and Vice-President of Beijing Celebrity Painting and Calligraphy Institute. He has published a full-length novel titled “One Night Lotus”, and poetry collections including “A Couple of Trees”, “You Sit Opposite Me”, “Selected Lyric Poems of Zhou Zhanlin”, “Chinese Poetry· Zhou Zhanlin”, “Blooming” and “Singing All the Way”. He has published over ten collections of essays, such as “Riding the Tide” and “Return and Transcendence”. His biographies are included in dictionaries such as “Dictionary of Chinese Writers”, “Dictionary of Chinese Poets” and “Dictionary of Chinese Novelists”. He is Editor-in-Chief of “Selected Poems of 2008 Olympic Games” by 2008 Olympic Organizing Committee. He won the 2009 Annual Poet Award of Mangzhong Literature, the Chinese Long Poetry Award, the Guo Xiaochuan Poetry Award, and the Contemporary Novel Award of the Chinese Fiction Society. Romania granted him the award of “Knight of Poetry” at the 5th Yaxi International Poetry Festival.
周 占 林 诗 选
Selected Poems of ZHOU Zhanlin
Standing on the Hillside to Touch Homesickness
On the homeward way
The sunshine which has reached spring
Covers me with the warmth of childhood
With thick yearning I
Fondle the fertile native soil
The weak homeland in the curling kitchen smoke
Still slim and lean
The hillful of pear flowers
Is painfully white
The languid spring wind
Is gently waving the weak nerve of homeland
As if by a slip of the mind
The expectation through years becomes dropping tears
Standing on the hillside I
Seem to be standing on the edge of missing hometown
With brilliant words
To filter native feelings time and again
The kitchen smoke which has been sung in my childhood composition
Extends a gray-black little hand
To pluck the uneasiness in the depth of my heart
What is shed by the coal car
Is not only dust and poverty
I can hear
The painful groaning of blood under the wheels
Now the hillful of pear flowers offer the white invitation
Emotional movement fills my eyes
My childhood mates, their days have been sealed white
By darkness in the deep coal pit
While sweat becomes a dark river
Running year after year
Viewing from a height the form of hometown which is wasting away
A bird which is called nostalgia
Drops together with sunshine and pear flowers
Beautiful Affairs of Flowers and Fruits
When flowers are opening, the fruits are afoot
I do not know what is the beginning point
Anbanghe swamp
The infatuation free of impregnation
By means of omission
Is reserved for the blue over your sky
When I miss your name
You are growing wildly in secret
Silence will never abandon this season
Water in the lake
Falls in love with darkness of the dark earth
I break the inverted image in water
To release all illusions concerning you
The simple and happy fruits
Are like something with which I am familiar
Always makes you firm and upward
The lotus leaves filled with internal injury
Have covered the patch of water
The autumnal wind fails to obstruct
The dry lotus
From shedding solitary tears
Three geese cannot reach the river bank
There must be a perseverance
For the stubborn and chaste sunshine to shine on bankside reed
And three women who write poems
Are thrown into passion by a flowery petal
No matter how endearing are fishes in the river
Their eyes extend downward like roots
The plume chased by purity knows already
For flowers and fruits
There is a perfect ending
Yellow Jessamine
The thunder of spring
Never fails to tantalize my spring yearning
When I awake
With my blossom after blossom of timid light yellow
I dot the world covered by white snow
Oh the squirming and wiggling
Makes the sacred expectation
Befall in each spring
I wake up in spring
And open the heavy door of the season
The brilliant sunshine bloods in
The tender grass beneath the feet is whispering
For the hardened earth
To begin loosen
In the process
I will not omit all details
Oh wind, always reluctant to unload
The cold coat
With language sharp like cutting edge
I cut open my brightness which is to burst
In my slow walking
To turn my bosomful of passion
Into the soul of spring
To sprinkle it to the perfumed earth
Spring, spring
A voice is calling to me
I have heard
The clear breaking voice of winter bones
Watching opposite the bank
Willows lean here, spring swallows soar there
A beautiful elaborate-style painting
Is sprinkling in the palette of nature