The Lost Craft

Born in 1965 in Taizhou, Zhejiang, Hai An, a Chinese scholar-poet and translator, whose real name is Li Dingjun, has achieved recognition for his contributions to the literary world. He was the winner of the Shanghai Cultural Development Fund (2007), Chinese National Social Sciences Fund (2013), Shanghai Universities and Colleges Major Strategic Publishing Project Fund for National Service (2014), and the STA Translation Achievements Award issued by the Shanghai Translator Association (2016).

Hai An graduated from the Department of Foreign Languages at Hangzhou University and the Graduate School of Shanghai Medical University in the 1980s. He currently serves as editor-in-chief of English-Chinese Medical Dictionary and is an Associate Professor at the College of Foreign Languages and Literatures. Additionally, he is a research scholar of the Literary Translation Research Center/China-Australia Creative Writing Center at Fudan University.

He has published more than ten books of poetry in various capacities as author, translator, and editor. Some of his notable works include Selected Poems by Hai An (2001), Selected Short Poems by Hai An (2003, Hong Kong), Elegy: Hai An's First Therapeutic Long Poem (2012, Taiwan), and When, Like a Running Grave: A Critical Approach to Dylan Thomas's Poetry and Its Translation (2020). His translation works feature Selected Poems of Dylan Thomas (2002, 2014, 2015), In the Stream of Time: Selected Poems of Germain Droogenbroodt (2008), and Collected Poems of Samuel Beckett (co-translated, 2016).

Hai An also co-edited and contributed to significant anthologies such as A Centennial Collected Papers on Sino-Occidental Poetry Translation (2007), The Frontier Tide: Contemporary Chinese Poetry (Europe/Qinghai, 2009), and Homings and Departure: Selected Poems from Contemporary China and Australia (co-edited, 2018).