Book launch poster created by Amber Hendriksson for ‘Night-Shining White’
by Ma Yongbo 马永波 and Helen Pletts 海伦·普莱茨
Cambridge Poetry Festival 10th October 2026
Cambridge Poetry Festival Poster, October 10th 2026, Cambridge, Planet Earth, The Universe
Join us for a night of films poetry and international poets! We’re thrilled to be showing a selection of film poems submitted to the festival. Then we’re welcoming poetry readings by South African poet Athambile Masola and Chinese poet Ma Yongbo. This will also act as the launch for the collaborative, bi-lingual collection ‘Night-Shining White’ by Ma Yongbo and his UK collaborative co-translator Helen Pletts.
You can grab a ticket and read more about the event here:
https://www.cambridgepoetryfestival.org/events/film-poems-and-international-readings
With films by:
– Olive Mills
– Mimi Thompson
– Katherine Stockton
– Peter Whittenberger
– Daisy Thurston-Gent
– Catching Shadows
– Emma Gant
– C. Moss Collective
– Janet Lees
– Jo Gifford
Ma Yongbo has published over eighty original works and translations since 1986 including 9 poetry collections. Ma Yongbo’s complete Chinese translation of Moby Dick has sold over 600,000 copies. The Collected Poems of Ma Yongbo (four volumes, Eastern Publishing Centre, 2024) comprising 1178 poems, celebrate 40 years of writing poetry. He teaches at Nanjing University of Science and Technology.
In August 2026 he received the American poetry award: New Generation Beat Poet Laureate (2026-lifetime) China, from The National Beat Poetry Foundation (NBPF) in the United States. In July 2026, at the 6th Silk Road International Poetry Festival, he received the Egyptian Arab Oscar Poetry Award, the festival’s highest honour, and the Silk Road International Poets Federation Laureate Poet Award.
Helen Pletts is the UK collaborative co-translator of Ma Yongbo, her official Chinese translator. She is a committee member of CB1 Poetry, the established monthly poetry reading event in central Cambridge UK, which has organised poetry readings for many years. Besides Chinese, her work has been translated into Bangla, Greek, Vietnamese, Serbian, Korean, Arabic, Italian, Albanian, Romanian and Spanish.
Helen and Ma Yongbo are co-creators of the ongoing series of Response Poetry Volumes of the transnational dialogue featured in the ‘Ma Yongbo Poetry Road Trip – Summer Tour 2025’ published by International Times since 10th May 2025.
In July 2026, her poetry, translated by Ma Yongbo, was awarded the Hong Kong Literature and Art Award, an accolade of extraordinary excellence in literary creation, artistic expression and cultural communication by Hong Kong Literature and Art.
Location
Anglia Ruskin University
East Road
Cambridge
Cambridgeshire
CB1 1PT
HARDBACK VERSION https://www.waterstones.com/book/night-shining-white/helen-pletts/ma-yongbo/9781066682812
PAPERBACK VERSION https://www.waterstones.com/book/night-shining-white/helen-pletts/ma-yongbo/9781066682812
“Through the unceasing translation of each other’s works and our responsive poems, Helen and I have built a space where two souls can breathe.”
Ma Yongbo 马永波 for Jade Moon, Editor Ivana Milanovic, Issue 3, 2025
‘thank you for your loving Ancient Chinese Poetry, wish to communicate with you more about (ancient and contemporary) poetry’ these were Ma Yongbo’s 马永波 first words to Hong Kong Literature and Art Award winner Helen Pletts 海伦·普莱茨 after she left a short comment on the American website Vox Populi back in February 2024.
And so, readers, she did write back to him and, nearly three years on, these two poets are inseparable, nurturing each other and the transnational poetry community between them—loving every minute, loving nature, surviving severe illness and overcoming the extraordinary 8 hours time difference between them to bring not only their own poetry to the world but of everyone else they meet. It’s the friendship of the here and now, proof that love exists the world over and its name has always been poetry!
“i am morning, you are night—for Ma Yongbo 我是早晨，你是夜晚 海伦·普莱茨 ——赠马永波”
“I am morning, you are night by Ma Yongbo—to Helen Pletts 我是黎明，你是夜晚 马永波——赠海伦·普莱茨”
This is the fascinating first completely bilingual poetry collection by Helen Pletts 海伦·普莱茨 and Ma Yongbo 马永波, co-creators of the Ma Yongbo Poetry Road Trip for International Times.
These two poets, from opposite ends of the earth, invite you into their real life adventures in what appear, at first, to be two languages but are really a deeper understanding of each other very clearly in poetry
Ma Yongbo 马永波, is the poet and translator who has shaped Chinese Contemporary poetry for over 40 years—translating the American greats like John Ashbery, Emily Dickinson, and whose Chinese translation of Melville’s famous classic novel ‘Moby Dick” has gone on to sell over 600,000 copies.
The fabulously innovative black and white photography of their dear friend and award winning Film Poet Janet Lees 珍妮特·丽兹 joins them here beside their poetry!
Article in ‘The Rhythm of Vietnam’ to coincide with the book launch of ‘Night-Shining White’ by Ma Yongbo 马永波 and Helen Pletts 海伦·普莱茨 written by Vo Thi Nhu Mai, Australia, Planet Earth, The Universe
All images and poetry under individual copyright © to Ma Yongbo 马永波 and Helen Pletts 海伦·普莱茨 Amber Hendriksson and Athambile Masola and Cambridge Poetry Festival
,