THE RIDDLE OF TEA

by Feng Yi   

Feng Yi’s The Riddle of Tea is more than a question requiring ingenuity to answer. Feng’s “riddle” poses a formal problem on every page: what is the structure that actively transmits her

poetry? She arranges her poems in brilliant lines, challenging fields of words and even a series of pictures composed of words. Writing her poetry originally in English from the perspective of a native Chinese speaker, these poems twist and turn on the pages into unexpected shapes that subtly connect her mother tongue Chinese language with her second language English, making communications between these two languages and these two cultures.

Feng Yi is an English-Chinese bilingual writer, scholar, translator and associate professor at the Foreign Studies College, Northeastern University, China. Her research interests include English and American poetry and American literature. She has published more than 20 academic papers. Her English poems were published in journals in the United States and Hong Kong, such as The Penn Review and Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine. She has published poetry translations in China and abroad, and her Chinese poetry was published in China and online. She has been awarded the Bronze Prize in the Global Chinese Poetry competition.