at three o’clock in the morning
you put your arms around a tree
because there’s no-one to put their arms
around you
Sleepwalking by Yu Yoyo is a set of 11 connected poems. In translating this poem the translators, Dave Haysom and AK Blakemore, were forced by the form of the English language to specify who the poem is addressing in a way that the Chinese original left totally open.
You can buy an introduction to Yu Yoyo’s poetry My Tenantless Body translated by Dave Haysom and AK Blakemore from the PTC online store.
This is part of our new rebranded weekly release: the Dual Poetry Podcast, one poem in two languages from the Poetry Translation Centre. As ever we will be releasing a translated poem each week.
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