Break Out S2 (6): Rita Dove (America) and Cheng Jia (China)

Rita Dove is one of the important contemporary American poets. Her publications include more than ten poetry books, most recently Playlist for the Apocalypse (2021), Sonata Mulattica (2009), American Smooth (2004), On the Bus with Rosa Parks (1999). In 2011 she edited The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry. A collection of the first thirty years of her poetry, Collected Poems 1974-2004 was published in the spring of 2016.

Rita Dove served as U.S. Poet Laureate from 1993 to 1995. Among her numerous literary and academic honors are the 1987 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for her book Thomas and Beulah, the 2011 National Medal of Arts from President Obama and the 1996 National Humanities Medal from President Clinton (making her the only poet who received both presidential medals), the Fulbright Lifetime Achievement Medal, the Wallace Stevens Award, and the Heinz Award. In 2015, Rita Dove received the 10^th Poetry and People—International Poetry Award in Guangdong.

Jia Cheng teaches translation in College of Foreign Studies, Jinan University. Her translated poems appeared in literary journals. She is the translator of R.S. Thomas’ Selected Poems 1946—1968, Collected Poems 1945—1990 and Collected Later Poems 1988—2000. Her published books of translation also include Back Into the Streets She Who Has Brought Mercy, selected poems by Rita Dove, The Dolphin and Collected Prose by Robert Lowell, The Function of Criticism by Terry Eagleton, Remembering the Future by Luciano Berio, Build Me an Ark byBrenda Peterson, and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin,etc. Her translation of W. B. Yeats’ play The Only Jealousy of Emer was staged in 2020 Guangzhou New Year Potery Gala.