today, i just received an email from editor Gerard NeCastro about my poem “Natural Confrontations” nominated on december 1, 2013 by the Binnacle (http://machias.edu/binnacle) for a Pushcart Prize. this is the 3rd nomination i received for pushcart for 2013, and 8th time i have ever been nominated for it since 2009. while i do not really care whether i will eventually win the prize (i have never had such good luck), i feel surer about my poetic creativity each time i am nominated.
last year, i was also nominated by a chinese poetry magazine World Poetry 【《世界诗刊》】as one of its 'best' poets in 2013. i suppose this was more a political than a poetic nomination. (interestingly, my poems written in or translated into chinese have had little luck with chinese editors; in other words, i have had much difficulty in getting my poems publish in chinese.)
despite such international recognition, i have not been able to find a single canadian publisher willing enough to publish my poetry in the book form. i have tried very hard for almost a whole decade (since i began to write poetry in engish in aug 2004), but never without success. the only way i have learned to deal with this failure psychologically is to explore my inborn chinese 'Ah Q Spirit': indeed, there is so much well-known canadian mediocrity that i can never distinguish myself as a truly talented poetry scribbler in my own chosen country.
in fact, i never call myself a 'poet,' not to mention a canadian one.
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since mid-2009, i have been receiving at least 12 poetry acceptances each calendar month.
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