Vessels, by Ningli Deng

Vessels, by Ningli Deng (邓宁立), translated by Will Buckingham

Intense and textured, Ningli Deng’s poems explore some of the largest of questions through the smallest of details — a jar of greengages, a cup, scaled fish, the spiny shell of jackfruit sliced open to reveal the muscular flesh beneath. This first book-length collection of Deng's poems in English is published in a bilingual Simplified Mandarin / English edition.

    She holds a disposable cup, 
    is feeding her child water, 
    clear water, without ripples, 
    that sunlight can easily pierce,
   without harbouring a trace of shadow.
    It only takes the tremor of a shake, 
    to set aflame the facing wall...


Ningli Deng is a poet, novelist, and translator based in Zhuhai, China. She is the translator of Jane Hirshfield’s Nine Gates: Entering The Mind of Poetry and the edited collection, My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales (Penguin Books). Her work has appeared in Shanghai Culture, West Lake, and Sinan Literary Selection, among other literary journals.

Will Buckingham is a writer and translator from the UK. He currently divides his time between Scotland and Taiwan.