In recent years, Taiwanese poetry has gained sustained international attention. Several collections have been translated into English, French, Dutch, German, Italian, and Swedish, earning translation prizes and increasing global visibility. With Ling Yü receiving the Newman Prize in 2025 and Chen Yuhong being awarded the Cicada Prize in 2022, it is timely to revisit contemporary Taiwanese poetry and recognize its depth, strength, and vitality, qualities that not only resist being overshadowed by the prominence of contemporary Chinese poetry but also affirm Taiwan’s rightful place on the world stage in its own name, without mediation through China. This special issue on Ling Yü and Chen Yuhong seeks to further consolidate their visibility through the platform of Taiwan Lit and the Global Sinosphere and to examine the processes through which their works may be canonized within broader literary frameworks.

Pairing Ling Yü and Chen Yuhong provides a unique lens for exploring Taiwanese poetry across generational and stylistic lines. Ling Yü’s work is often associated with lyrical density, philosophical reflection, and explorations of interiority. As Cosima Bruno remarked in her Newman Prize rationale: “Ling Yü’s language is economical and concise, yet surprising and reverberating with complex meaning. Her poetry engages thoughtfully with classical and modern, Eastern and Western literary, philosophical, artistic, and esoteric sources, generating outstanding works that require attention but are also intuitively grasped.”

Chen Yuhong, by contrast, presents a distinct poetic aesthetic. Her work foregrounds feminist critique and musicality, while her practice as a translator has introduced the works of Louise Glück, Carol Ann Duffy, Anne Carson, and Margaret Atwood into Mandarin. Taiwanese scholar Chen I-chih observes that Chen Yuhong “poured her lifelong sensitivity and passion into her work,” and that “her achievement lies primarily in the subtle prosody forged through the fusion of Chinese and Western poetics, as well as in the multilayered system of imagery she developed,” which earned her the United Daily News Literary Grand Prize in 2017.

This special issue offers the first sustained attempt to consider Ling Yü and Chen Yuhong together, mapping their contributions to the broader horizons of Taiwanese and Sinophone literary studies. Contributors may focus on either poet individually or examine them in comparative perspective. We invite submissions that engage with the two poets from multiple critical perspectives, including but not limited to:

1. Feminism and gender studies

2. Transcultural, transnational, and translational circulation

3. Taiwanese poetry in the framework of world and planetary literature

4. Body politics and poetics of embodiment

5. Comparative poetics: resonances and divergences between Ling Yü and Chen Yuhong

6. Memory and history (e.g., martial law, transitional justice, generational memory)

7. Affect and desire

8. Language politics and Sinophone diversity

9. Ecology and the environment (eco-poetics, planetary imagination, Anthropocene)

10. Reception and readership: circulation within Taiwan, across Sinophone contexts, and globally

11. Poetics of voice, silence, and sound (performance, orality, musicality)

12. East–West literary traditions

13. Transmedia dialogues between poetry and music

Through these perspectives, the special issue aims to highlight the significance of Ling Yü and Chen Yuhong in shaping Taiwanese literary modernity and to situate their works within broader conversations in Sinophone studies, feminism, translation studies, and world literature. Articles may be written in either English or Mandarin. Submissions should be accompanied by an abstract of approximately 200 words. For English articles, the expected length is 6,000–7,000 words, with footnotes and bibliography formatted according to MLA style. For Chinese articles, the length should not exceed 10,000 characters. Abstracts should be submitted to Justyna Jaguścik (justyna.jaguscik@unibe.ch) and Wen-chi Li (oskiey@gmail.com).

Timeline

31 Oct 2025: Abstract deadline

31 Aug 2026: Full article submission

2028: Expected Publication