Monday 10 July 2017

july updates: changming's lit endeavors

1. on the evening of july 8, my chinese poet friend dr Zhang Zhi, chief editor of World Poets Quarterly (http://theworldpoetsquarterly.blogspot.ca/), contacted me about his intention to base his magazine in a foreign country like canada rather than in his home city chongqing at the strong suggestion made by his readers/contributors/associates. accordingly, he offered to give me the title of 'president' of WPQ. functioning as such only in name, i have no obligations or responsibilities except that i can recommend poems to the magazine on a regular basis or contribute some time as an editor at large. no matter what, this is an unexpected honor, which allows me to have a closer and more formal connection with the multilingual magazine, which is perhaps the world's most widely circulated poetry magazine in print.

2. i got 9 poetry acceptances in may, and 12 in june. really disappointed and frustrating is the fact that sometimes a 'well-established' magazine accepts my poetry but stops operation just when it is scheduled to publish my work. this time is chile-based Southern Pacific Review. last time was scotland-based Glasgow Review. similar cases are those in which my accepted poetry never appears because the magazine changes its editor, who chooses to ignore my work just when the magazine is supposed to publish it.

3. though i cannot write now as much poetry as well as i used to, i am still fortunately able to do some writing from time to time; that means, my Muse has never deserted me yet. as long as life goes on, i hope and even believe there are times when i can write poetry up to my own standard at least. the problem is, i cannot find good enough poetry to read!

4. at the request of dr Zhuo Tongnian, one of the world's most renowned chinese traditional medical doctors alive today, i translated some promotional material for his elite club 'Optimum Health Yangsheng' (http://yang-sheng.com/ ), the original chinese text is extremely challenging, so i have to explore my skills to the fullest extent. i do know if it's satisfactory enough. because of my deteriorating health and my idiosyncracies, i usually refrain from doing any translation work although my thesis supervisor at tianjin normal university highly recommended me as a really good chinese-english translator even 35 years ago. in recent week, i suffered from frequent chest discomfort and chest pain in addition to eye and kneel problems, but dr Zhuo's herbal medecine has been wonderfully effective: right after taking his medicine, i felt no more chest pain.

5. conditioned by my physiological and psychological constitutions, i will concentrate on poetry writing only for the rest of my life. in other words, i have finally given up all my plans and intentions for other kinds of writing.

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