Jidi Majia

Jidi Majia’s work, while translated into other European and Asian languages, has never previously been available in the English-speaking world. Mither Tongue is however a unique introduction in both Scots and English to the work of this eminent ethnic poet from China’s Sichuan region.

He has published numerous poetic anthologies since the 1980s and has won national literature awards, and is considered one of the greatest poets amongst the minorities in China. He is the President of the China Minority Literary Association. His themes, while embedded in his Nuosu culture, are timely explorations of what it means to be at one with nature and his fellow humans.

He writes with humility and compassion, with a wide-ranging knowledge of all Chinese literatures across the dynasties and embracing present-day Chinese poetics. His assimilation of the world’s great literatures, together with expertise in Chinese and Nuosu literatures leads to an astonishing tour de force in which everything gains this dual orientation: on one hand it is rooted in the land-based, tribal sensibility of the Nuosu, and on the other hand it is characterised by expansive subjectivity reaching out into the modern world.