Borderless Creation: Ming Di’s World of Poetry Translation, Co-translation and Self-translation

This chapter deals with the fascinating entanglement between poetic creation, self-translation and co-translation, by focusing on the very peculiar case of the Chinese poet Ming Di 明迪 and the process of double or multiple creativity entailed in her work River Merchant’s Wife, a collection of poems published in English translation in 2012. I will consider her multifaceted role as a poet, translator, editor and poetry critic, and her cross-lingual and cross-cultural identity as a Chinese expat in the United States. Indeed, all these elements play a pivotal role in shaping both the creative process and the intrinsic texture of her poems, making her case a very specific one which challenges the definition of Sinophone and its borders.