yuan: lit endeavours -2jan2021

 1. got 18 acceptances in october, 17 in november, & 12 in december last year by various kinds of literary outlets, including such as belief anthology,  fortnightly review, maryland lit rev, review americana and the pinch journal.  

2. in october, Sound of USA [美洲文化之声 国际传媒网] published 7 of my chinese poems (again) at 

http://www.soundofusa.com/%E9%9B%AA%E8%8A%B1-%E8%A2%81%E6%98%8C%E6%98%8E-%EF%BC%88%E5%8A%A0%E6%8B%BF%E5%A4%A7%EF%BC%89/;  in novermber, 《麒麟诗刊》accepted (and published on 1 jan 2021) two of my chinese poems; moreover, three weixin or wechat jounrals, namely 《海外文学》、《北极星新文学》& 《华文现代诗》, each featured a number of my chinese poems. 

3. in october, finished translating into english zhang xinyue's chinese book 《心灵成长：丰盛篇〉, which is probably my last paid intelectual work, to be published shortly in china.

4. on 20 october, won the "wordview 2020" prize for reading my poem 'standing still against the pandemic,' given by poetry archive now [https://poetryarchive.org/poem/wordview-2020-standing-still-against-the-pandemic/].

5. in november, finished proofreading the e.galley of my nineth chapbook, to be published soon by a california-based press.

6. on 11 december, received notificatin from DMQ Review aabout their official nomination of my poem, “Native Landscaping,” for an annual Pushcart Prize. this is the 11th time for me to be nominated for the same prize. 

7. in december, finished proofreading my mom's memoirs titled  《平凡人生, 平凡故事》 ('an ordinary life, an ordinary story,' roughly about 23,700 character-long), which were far better narrated/written than i have anticipated; some sentences are even poetic! i am to post it both here and on my chinese site, to celebrate her 80th birthday in a couple of weeks.

8. on 27 december, inspired to resume writing my only chinese  non-fiction book 《温哥华情笺》called  (Letters from Vancouver), a 176,000 character-long book of memoires, which i wrote and never meant to continue after putting down my pen 20 years ago. orginally intended to be a quite ambitious literary project, the book has been written in a highly experimental hybrid style (or what i call 'epistolary-diary').  all thanks to a female highschoolmate who laboured together with me on a forest farm by the yangtse river for more than 2 years while receiving 're-education' between 1974 and 1977 during the cultural revolution, i hit upon the idea of taking up the pen again on the morning. 

9. ever since i began to write poetry in english in late 2004, i have found i have two creative weaknesses: one is my failure to write (especially longer) narrative poems -- to me, that subgenre is not for poetry authors, but for story tellers); the other is my inability to write love poems, probably because i am too old for this subgenre or have too little inspiring experience of it. nevertheless, in the past year, i have surprisingly written 12 pieces in english, and 7 in chinese, all for one chinese senior. 

a lot has been going on, and i hope to keep writing...