by Yau Ching 游靜

Translated by Chenxin Jiang

Winner of the 2020 Words Without Borders and Academy of American Poetry translation contest

for now I am sitting here growing transparent brings together some of Yau Ching’s most resonant poems in a bilingual mid-career retrospective that reveals a writer working at the edges of visibility, language, and belonging. Moving through Hong Kong, the U.S., Tokyo, and the unnamed spaces in between, these poems conjure a landscape of hauntings—of unrealised possibilities, political fractures, and tender, fiercely honest self-inquiry.

With a voice both rebellious and vulnerable, Yau uses softness as a mode of critique, crafting poems that refuse easy categories: neither strictly confessional nor overtly polemical, but something more fluid, radically open, and alive to the ambiguities of identity, queerness, and community. Her images shift like shadowplay—steaks as metaphors for love, cinemas as portals to truth—offering a dreamlike counter-language that pushes back against the dominant forces of capitalism, coloniality, and erasure.

Chenxin Jiang’s vivid English translations preserve Yau’s playfulness and razor-sharp attentiveness to language, making this volume read like an intimate conversation with a brilliant friend—one unafraid to ask the most heartbreaking questions. Urgent yet delicately understated, for now I am sitting here growing transparent invites readers to inhabit its atmospheric world, where getting lost becomes a form of permanence and transparency becomes its own kind of strength.

“I read this entire volume in one sitting. It is fascinating the way only poetry that hits home hardest can be, and I read it the only way I could, as if chased by monsters.” —Amie Parry, professor at National Central University

“Yau Ching’s for now I am sitting here growing transparent is a book of hauntings, a magically conjured landscape, envisioned from the gaps and unrealised possibilities of Hong Kong, America, Tokyo, and all the spaces in between.” —Chris McCabe, poet

“Reading these poems is like conversing with a brilliant and thoughtful friend about issues big and small concerning Hong Kong and the world at large, one who is unafraid to ask the heartbreaking questions. Chenxin Jiang’s vivid translation recreates Yau’s playfulness and careful attentiveness to language, resulting in a bilingual volume of poetry that is rebellious, timely, and ultimately unforgettable.” —Jennifer Feeley, translator

“Exemplifying how Yau uses softness and vulnerability in the stead of impassioned critique, readers are likely to find themselves entranced by these poems, their fiercely gentle existence outside of social hierarchy… Translated from Chinese, For now I am sitting here growing transparent is Yau’s fifteenth book, and her first to be translated into English. Gathering work from Yau’s other collections, this text is a kind of mid-career retrospective, making Yau’s work accessible to English-speaking audiences while also curating the most resonant and crafted poems from her corpus… Delicately understated yet full of Yau’s queer and feminist politics, this compilation is both ideologically and formally explorative, refusing to fall into the neat category of confessional poetry—or conversely, of explicitly political content… this collection sees its poet eventually arriving at a kind of self-assured openness, a universe in which she can be both confessional and declamatory. Thus, For now I am sitting here growing transparent is not solely a detached work of art for art’s sake, but a radically prefigurative text intertwined with social movements and communities of care, creating a world without dichotomies between softness and strength.”—mk zariel, Asymptote Journal

“These are poems of atmosphere, that invite you to walk inside them and inhabit their worldview, seeing the world from a blade-like angle. In the windtunnel of dominant languages, Yau Ching pushes back through the guerilla language of her own: poetry… Disenfranchised by colonial cat and mouse, these poems play their own games with reality, inviting us into a world where ‘only getting lost is permanent’, and – in the absence of social infrastructure—Poetry steps into the void to talk back to reckless capital. Updating Surrealism for the era of swiping, steaks become metaphors for love and cinemas become the spaces where truth might be found. Pick up the book and enter the dreamscape. In the realism of shadowplay, where identities merge in the shadows and voices seem louder in the dark, disappearing into transparency never felt so real.”—Chris McCabe, National Poetry Librarian, UK

About the Author

ISBN: 978-1-913891-56-5
Publication date:  15 December 2025
Format: Paperback (Demy octavo) 216mm x 138mm
Language:  Bilingual edition in Chinese and English 中英文雙語, with introduction in English
Pages:  146 pp

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