My time is divided into "Busy days" and "Empty days":
When I want to be busy, I plan to translate a selection of extracts from ancient Chinese poems, with my understanding and feeling about the spirits, the aesthetics and the historical background of this vast literary corpus. I would try to keep the work as much simple, accurate and inclusive as possible, hoping to provide, not as a scholar but as a poetry lover, an entry point or a window, to ordinary readers.
When the mind is quiet, I write poems in Qing Ping form, trying to erase first the verb, then eventually the word "I". This writing would be less as a literary practice than as a way to record some plain moments of life down to its essence.
I value my empty days very much. Here the chosen poetical form, Qing ("Q" could be pronounced as "TSh") Ping Yue (清平乐) -- "the air of peaceful simplicity", is an ancient form created very early in the history, inspired by a musical form having the same name, It became popular around 1000 ACE at the Song epoch.
The shortened Qing Ping contains only four verses. The syllabation is 4/5/7/6. Rhyming can be flexible.
The main topic of this poetry is about NATURE.
It is a way to meditate.
This very brief and restrictive form may help to evoke the void within the fullness, the silence between words.
“Isola” is my solitary workshop, and probably also a place to meet.
In the "Sharing" page, comments and ideas are welcome, our friends' recent work are announced, or you will find some online source documents complimentary to this site.
The site is renewed usually around the third weekend of each month, except July, August and December. It is designed for no more than 15 minutes of reading time. Due to the limited web space, the content remains within a limited time frame.
Poetry belongs to EVERYONE. We hope many people would enjoy reading and also writing, in ANY PREFERRED LANGUAGES, the poems in Qing Ping form, accompanied sometimes, when and if possible, with an image: a drawing, a painting, or a photograph.
I would like to cultivate this site as a garden of languages. Poems appearing in "Isola Poetry" page, when they are in more than one languages, are often self translated, unless otherwise noticed.