Tafseer

TAFSEER IMPRINT

Poetry translation submissions open

until September 10

Tafseer publishes chapbook-length manuscripts of poetry translated into English by BIPOC & racialized translators.

Working against systemic undervaluation of the expertise & labour of BIPOC & racialized translators, Tafseer dedicates all revenue toward compensating translators as well as the BIPOC & racialized editors who work with them.

Tafseer, an imprint of Collusion Books, is edited by Khashayar Mohammadi.

Tafseer submissions are currently open. See our Submissions page for details.

Congratulations to Yilin Wang, whose manuscript, The Lantern and the Night Moths / 灯与夜蛾, was selected as the winner of the first Tafseer Chapbook Prize!

Coming with a $500 cash award and print + ebook publication, the prize celebrates chapbook-length manuscripts of poetry translated into English by BIPOC & racialized translators.

The Lantern and the Night Moths / 灯与夜蛾 will be published in print and ebook in October, 2022, with pre-sales beginning in September. It will be a bilingual chapbook on time, language, and mortality featuring five modern and contemporary Chinese poets selected and translated by Yilin Wang: Fei Ming / 废名, Qiu Jin / 秋瑾, Dai Wangshu / 戴望舒, Zhang Qiaohui / 张巧惠, and Xiao Xi / 小西.

Yilin Wang (she/they) is a writer, poet, and Chinese-English translator living on the unceded lands of the Coast Salish peoples (Richmond, BC). Her writing has appeared in Clarkesworld, Fantasy Magazine, The Malahat Review, Grain, CV2, The Puritan, The Toronto Star, The Tyee, Words Without Borders, and elsewhere.

She has won the Foster Poetry Prize, has received an ALTA Virtual Travel Fellowship, has been longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize, and has been a two-time finalist for The Malahat Review‘s Far Horizons Award for Short Fiction.

Her translations have appeared or are forthcoming in POETRY, Guernica, Room, Asymptote, LA Review of Books, China Channel, Samovar, Pathlight, and the anthology The Way Spring Arrives and Other Stories (TorDotCom 2022). She is also the Chinese translator of the picture book Amy Wu and the Patchwork Dragon (Simon & Schuster, 2021).

She has an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC and is a graduate of the 2021 Clarion West Writers Workshop.

"What struck me first about Yilin Wang's The Lantern and the Night Moths / 灯与夜蛾 was the greatness of the poet: their translations feel effortless, as if translation were simply a method of producing great poetry. With respect for the agency of the five Chinese poets they translate, only a great poet can translate poetry this well, hitting emotional marks through a masterful exploration of space, style, and substance—balancing intricate knowledge of the source language with creative probing of the target language, creating poetry that feels utterly unmitigated and urgent but also demonstrates, on closer examination by even an untrained eye, a rigorous process. Showcasing translators like Yilin Wang is exactly why the Tafseer Prize was created."

Khashayar Mohammadi

Tafseer editor