Painting: The Ocean Swimmer by Deborah Bogen, 2025
A person is swimming in a melting snowdrift
the snowdrift keeps melting
but it never disappears
A person is swimming in a melting snowdrift
all the way to the sea
the snowdrift still doesn’t disappear
An extra brown cloud drifts over the ocean
inside it, someone who refuses to vanish
keeps swimming, dreaming of his own slow melting
2025.04.22 Aboard the Plane
Response Poetry by Ma Yongbo 马永波
Response Poetry Translated by Ma Yongbo 马永波
题德博拉·博根画《海洋泳者》On Deborah Bogen’s Painting ‘The Ocean Swimmer’ 马永波
一个人在不断融化的雪堆里游泳
雪堆一直在融化
但始终没有消失
一个人在不断融化的雪堆里游泳
一直游到了海上
那雪堆依然没有消失
海上多了一朵褐色的云
一个不肯消失的人在云里
继续游泳，梦见自己在不断融化
20250422于归宁飞机上
fearless in every diminishing silver—in response to ‘The Ocean Swimmer’ by Deborah Bogen
在不断消退的银辉中无所畏惧——回应德博拉·博根的《海洋泳者》
if I am a silver wave, then let me also be a grey seal
opening the shoal. Or, I’m imagining this expansive greyness
might even be scattered with white feathers,
on a grey sliding liquid mountainside. Sloping here,
I am a fathom measuring plumb
that has not dropped; my arms extending like sea-wings.
A tiny piece of silver in my mouth with every breath.
24th April 2025
Response Poetry By Helen Pletts 海伦·普莱茨
在不断消退的银辉中无所畏惧——回应德博拉·博根的《海洋泳者》fearless in every diminishing silver—in response to ‘The Ocean Swimmer’ by Deborah Bogen 马永波 译
若我是银浪，我也要成为灰海豹
打开鱼群。抑或，我想象这广袤的灰
甚至会点缀着白色羽毛，
在滑动的液体山坡。在此倾斜，
我是尚未垂下的测深铅锤；
双臂如海洋之翼伸展。
每次呼吸，口中都有一小片亮银。
2025年4月24日
Response Poetry Translated by Ma Yongbo 马永波
Deborah Bogen
Deborah Bogen’s volumes of poetry include Speak Now This Charm, from Jacar Press, In Case of Sudden Free Fall, winner of the Jacar Poetry Prize, Landscape with Silos, winner of the XJ Kennedy Poetry Prize from Texas University Press, Let Me Open You a Swan, winner of the Elixir Press Antivenom Award, and a chapbook titled Living by the Children’s Cemetery. She has a long history of leading free creative writing workshops in her home and teaching young writers in Pittsburgh’s many public schools. Her two historical novels, The Witch of Leper Cove and The Hounds of God, are available on Amazon.
She lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA where she balances the poet’s life with painting, playing music with family and friends, and grassroots political work.
Deborah Bogen is a very fond friend of Ma Yongbo and Helen Pletts. Her 3 co-translations with Ma Yongbo were the catalyst for their own close working.
“Deborah Bogen, thank you a thousand times, for your 3 initial co-translations of Yongbo’s poetry, published 12th February 2024 in Vox Populi, which inspired me to leave a comment. Michael Simm’s, Editor, Vox Populi, thank you, for bringing it all together back then, without your support I might not have had the confidence to write to Yongbo directly. Our first comments to each other are still on the site. Michael, you went on to publish one of our first co-translations ‘Midway Stop’ and you continue to publish us. The significance of Yongbo’s poetry in English has continued rising from that special day.” Helen Pletts, April 2025
https://voxpopulisphere.com/2024/02/12/deborah-bogen-three-poems-by-yongbo-ma/
Photo: Ma Yongbo in Harbin 2025
Greek poet Eva Petropolou Lianou interviews Chinese poet Ma Yongbo
Posted on 04/05/2025 by Synchronized Chaos
https://synchchaos.com/greek-poet-eva-petropolou-lianou-interviews-chinese-poet-ma-yongbo/
Photo: Helen Pletts, Cambridge 2025 www.helenpletts.com
“Helen’s very personal poetry reveals her strong connection to the natural world while also laying herself open emotionally. She writes with a thoughtful, mesmerising delicacy on love and death, on joy and need, illness and exhaustion”. Kate Birch, Publisher, Ink Sweat and Tears
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