Translated by AK Blakemore and Dave Haysom.

‘Stay’ starts with the wonderfully direct and odd line ‘Your beard is expendable’, a great example of Yu Yoyo’s lithe, arresting language, deftly translated by UK poet AK Blakemore and the translator Dave Haysom.

This is a poem in seven sections that sees the poet imaging a lover’s journey to Viet Nam, a country she had never visited when she wrote the poem.

You can find this poem in My Tenatless Body, an introduction to Yoyo’s work published by the PTC as part of our World Poets Series.

You can buy a copy of My Tenantless Body from the PTC website.

This is part of our weekly 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.

Please take a moment to rate and review this podcast on iTunes or wherever you download.