About this site

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.