掌心 · The Palm Poetry Society

About The Palm Poetry Society

Leaning on heaven, lighting the sea — flowers past counting;
running water, high mountain — the heart alone knows.
Ink and brush are the business of a thousand years;
peach and plum stand in the wind, and the hour is now.

The four lines above carry, hidden in them, the names of the ten earliest poets of The Palm — a fitting beginning for an unusual society.

The Palm Poetry Society grew out of “The Palm,” a small circle for poetry, literature and the arts formed in Toronto, Canada, in 2017. Membership was by strict invitation; the purpose was close exchange and the encouragement of real work. Its early roster numbered seventeen.

For several years the circle met freely and often — evenings of verse and wine at which everyone’s craft improved. To widen the reach of Chinese culture and of poetry as a high art, on 17 July 2022, at a gathering at Jinyuan, the twelve earliest members founded The Palm Poetry Society as its co-founders.

The Society exists for serious exchange in poetry and the arts, and for the making of new work: gatherings that cross between disciplines, friendship with accomplished poets and artists, and collaboration with poetry societies and artists around the world.

Preface to the Classical Verse — by Tao Ran

“Poetry speaks what the heart is set upon; song draws out the words.”

Once, in the Central Plain, each of us held to his own calling. Now, in another country, we listen together to the sound of a world in flower.

We met by river and sea and knew one another at once; we carry the far thought of home. And so The Palm was formed, and we raised our verses together.

Our minds wander through Han and Tang. Now and then we call for the cup and beat the gunwale; now and then we quarrel over the polishing of a line. Hence this regulated poem, with our names set into it:

Wine-courage raises a wind — twelve fools;
a thrown brick will not spoil an immortal’s poem.
The Song never had our lines,
yet our garden still sings the songs of Song.
This one cinnabar spring waters the soil of Zhao;
unhurried, fireflies rise into words.
Winter plum should stand handsome beside green maple —
lake, sea, spring mountain: one more branch in flower.

— Tao Ran

Preface to the Modern Verse — by Feng Dong

Original poetry today springs up everywhere, like bamboo after rain. Over three or four years of exchange, the seventeen members of The Palm have left behind a great many fine poems — broad in subject, bound to no single school, each voice independent and distinct. Wanting to look back on a road travelled together through wind and rain, we have chosen representative work by all seventeen for this collection, and added poems by several distinctive writers from outside the club, so that the book might be richer, wider, more fairly representative — and so that a reader might see something of what Chinese-language poetry in North America looks like now. Every poem here lays open the author’s honest heart. Whether it is good, we leave to the reader’s discerning eye.

— Feng Dong

A Chronicle of Fireflies — by Gu Tu

On 17 July 2022 — the nineteenth day of the sixth month of the year Renyin — The Palm gathered at Jinyuan on the auspicious occasion of Wén Rèn’s birthday. There was a fine table, hard drinking and loud talk, and the neighbours were startled by the laughter. In the middle of it Wén Rèn spoke of the singular position of the poet today, and of the overseas poet above all, and brought out a sword he had kept for many years. He said: we studied hard in China and we live in the West; we have felt the pull of an independent spirit and a free mind. Who, then, are we? If the literary task of our age and its burden do not fall to us, to whom do they fall? Starlight caught the frost-white blade, the fire blazed and lit our reddened faces, and every heart there was moved. Just then fireflies came down and circled over the palm and would not leave. One after another we spoke: The Palm was born in North America and into this age — was it not for exactly this that we came?

The group had by then been together more than five years. We had exchanged work and sharpened one another, and everyone’s power to write and to judge stood far above where it began. It was agreed that we would keep the same wide freedom as before while doing the organizing that was needed, and that the twelve who had joined earliest would found The Palm Poetry Society as its co-founders, with duties divided as follows:

President: Wén Rèn

Co-Editors-in-Chief: Gu Tu · Feng Dong

Editor, Modern Poetry: Feng Dong　　Editor, Classical Poetry: Tao Ran

Editors, Criticism: Gu Tu · Mo Wangshan

Directors of Translation: Yang Qing · Wu Yuehua

Directors of Events: Dan Dan · Wang Ting

Director of Recitation: Hai Bian

Photographer and Art Director: Fengye Zhenghong

Secretaries-General: Hai Bian · Hu Bian

After Jinyuan the work came in a flood, better and more plentiful than anything before; it is all collected in Poems of Jinyuan and need not be listed here. To record what those years had produced, the club resolved to publish an anthology, Fireflies — the first calling card of The Palm — and that is how this book came to be. Further collections will follow, at shortening intervals.

All of us agreed: in every heart there is some long-buried dream, or one slipping away with nothing done about it. Through each person’s own discipline, and by giving a little time and warmth to others and to The Palm, we can certainly make something worth making. Twelve palms answer the number of heaven; heaven willing, we shall give it everything we have — and not fail our own hearts, nor the trust and the task laid upon us.

— Gu Tu