"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. 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...poetry which has now been translated again and again into over 12 languages!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!
