Yang Lian
/China
Yang Lian, a Chinese poet, was born in Switzerland, grew up in China and now lives in London. He published 11 volumes of poetry, 2 volumes of prose as well as 1 volume of essays. His work has been translated into more 25 languages, and his representative works including YI, Where the Sea Stands Still; Concentric Circles; Riding Pisces: Poems from Five Collections; Lee Valley Poems... etc. His works have been reviewed as "like MacDiarmid meets Rilke with Samurai sword drawn!'", "one of the most representative voices of Chinese literature" and "one of the great world poets of our era'". His latest publication in English was Jade Ladder, an anthology of Contemporary Chinese Poetry edited by him, W.N. Herbert and others. Among other prizes, he won Nonino International Literature Prize 2012 (the jury of the prize presided by V S Naipaul), and he has been elected a board member of PEN International PEN in 2008 and 2011.