ANGELA LEIGHTON

ANTHONY RUDOLF

CLIVE WILMER

DAVID RUSHMER

LU YUN

NASOS VAYENAS

PETER HUGHES

QI REN

ROWAN WILLIAMS

RUPERT BROOKE

SHU TING

YANG LIAN

Angela Leighton was educated in Edinburgh and Oxford and has taught for many years at the University of Hull. She is now Professor of English and Senior Research Fellow at Trinity College Cambridge. She is also a fellow of the British Academy. She has published widely on nineteenth and twentieth century literature, including among other, Jane Austin, Tennyson and De Quincey. She has published short stories in carious magazines and her poetry has appeared in many journals.

Anthony Rudolf was born in 1942 in London. He studied modern languages and social anthropology in Cambridge. Among his many publications are three memoirs: The Arithmetic of Memory (1999), Silent Conversations: A Reader's Life (2013) and A Vanished Hand (2013). Rudolf has edited magazines and anthologies; his poems, reviews, articles, translations, interviews and obituaries have appeared in many journals. An occasional broadcaster, he was visiting lecturer in Arts and Humanities at London Metropolitan University and Royal Literary Fund Fellow at two universities. He is Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the English Association and Chevalier de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He founded Menard Press in 1969 and ran it for 40 years.

Clive Wilmer was born in Harrogate in 1945, grew up in London and was educated at King's College Cambridge. He now teaches English at Cambridge, where he is Emeritus Fellow in English at Sidney Sussex College and an Affiliated Lecturer in the Faculty of English. He is also an honorary Fellow of Anglia Ruskin University and has recently been a Visiting Professor at Ca' Foscari University in Venice. He has published many books of his poetry including works published with Carcanet Press and Worple Press. Collections of his poems have been published in Hungarian (2002) and in Spanish (2011). In 2005 he was awarded the annual Pro Cultura Hungarica Medal for translation by the Hungarian Ministry of Culture. An occasional broadcaster, he fronted BBC Radio 3's Poet if the Month programmes. He has becomne a frequent contributor - as poet, essayist and reviewer - to a variet of periodicals.

David Rushmer, born in 1965, is a writer and artist from the UK and was editor of pen; umbra magazine. He studied Visual Communication at University of East London, graduating in 1995, and has lived in Cambridge since 1997 working as a Senior Library Assistant at The English Faculty Library, University of Cambridge. His artworks and writings have appeared in over 30 journals and small press magazines in the UK, France and the USA. His artworks have also been exhibited in Cambridge, London and Yokohama.

Lu Yun, born in 1970, taught creative writing at Hunan Internation Economics University. His poems have been published in the Journal of Yunmeng and Mountain Flowers. His collections include Start-off (2015) and Wangyuechu Canpian (2011).

Nasos Vayenas was born in 1945 in Drama, in northern Greece. He studied literature at the University of Athens, Rome, Essex and Cambridge. He wrote his Ph.D thesis on George Seferis at King's College and his book The Poet and the Dancer (1979), became an authoritative work on Seferis. Nasos's first book of poems appeared in 1974 and since then he has published ten more collections and book of imaginative prose, as well as several critical works, among them The Language of Irony, which was awarded the Greek National Prize for Criticism in 1995. He is the recipient of major literary awards, including the Greek National Prize for Poetry (2005) for his collection his collection Garland, the Attiglio Bertolucci Poetry Prize (Italy, 2007) and the Brano Radicevis Prize (Serbia, 2007).

Peter Hughes is a poet and painter. He is also the founding editor of Oystercatcher Press, winner of the Michael Marks Award 'for outstanding UK publisher of poetry in pamphlet form'. Peter attended Chelthenham Art College and went on to study poetry. He studied at the Cambridgeshire College of Arts and Technology before completing a Master of Letters degree in Contemporary Poetry at Stirling University. He has worked translation, teaching and as an author. His Selected Poems were published by Shearsman in 2013 and Reality Street published Quite Frankly in 2015.

Qi Ren, born in 1965, is a poet, and Project Director and Secretary General of The All-China Poetry Reading Series. His poetry collections include The Gate of Fate and Scenery in the Palm. He received the first Shiguo Award in 1992, the Poetry Monthly annual prize in 2007 and, in 2009, the annual Award for Personal Achievement in Chinese Literature.

Dr Rowan Williams was educated at Dynevor Secondary Grammar School in Swansea, he came up to Christ's College in 1968. He studied for his doctorate at Christs Church and Wadham College Oxford. In 1984 he was elected a Fellow and Dean of Clare College, following this, at the age of 36, he was Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity for six years. He has since then served as the Bishop of Monmouth and the Archbishop of Wales and finally as the Archbishop of Canterbury from 2002-2012. He was awarded the Oxford higher degree of Doctor of Divinity in 1989 and has received honorary doctorates from more than a dozen universities including Cambridge and Durham. He is a noted poet and translator of poetry, speaking ten different languages.

Rupert Brooke was a distinguished English poet who was born in 1887 and died in 1915. Brooke won a scholarship to King's College, Cambridge, where he helped to found the Marlowe Society drama club and acted in Greek plays. He became a famous war poet with his poems 'The Dead' and 'The Soldier'. His most famous collection of poems, 1914 and Other Poems, was publsihed in 1915. He has featured in many films and novels because of his poetry, tragic early death and good looks. His poem 'Granchester', which features in the 2015 Xu Zhimo Anthology is set in the village near Cambridge and has become one of the most quoted poems in the English language. As well as a poet, Brooke was a distinguished letter writer. The major collection of the papers relating to his poetic work have been helf in King's College Archives for some years. In 2015 the College acquired, with generous support from the Heritage Lottery Fund, the largest private collection of his non-poetry archives.

Shu Ting is the pen name of Gong Peiyu. Born in 1952, she is the leading female representative of the 'Misty Poets' and currently vice-president of the Fujian Writers Association. She has published many collections, including The Twin-Masted Yacht and The Singing Iris. She is particularly well known for her poems "To an Oak Tree" and "Motherland, My Dear Motherland", the first of which is included in this anthology.

Yang Lian was born in Switzerland in 1955 and grew up in Beijing. His poems became to receive acclaim in the 1980s, especially when his sequence Norilang was published in 1983. His books include the long poem yi, Where the Sea Stands Still and Concentric Circles; and his writings have been translated into more than thirty languages. He has lived in London, among many other places and has collaborated widely with English-speaking poets. He has received a cluster of international awards.