Every Thursday for the duration of the exhibition we launch a book, and invite each author, as well as local writers, curators and academics to respond to The Annotated Reader, adding another layer to its annotations. Conversations between texts emerge, different pages of the Reader come to the fore as these readings are presented within the installation.

Poets Yu Yoyo and her translators A.K. Blakemore and Dave Haysom launch My Tenantless Body (Poetry Translation Centre, 2019), and Colin Herd (University of Glasgow) responds to translated text in The Annotated Reader. In partnership with the Poetry Translation Centre and Scottish Universities’ International Summer School.

Born in 1990, Sichuanese poet Yu Yoyohad already begun to earn critical attention before she turned sixteen, publishing dozens of poems in Poetry, Poetry Monthly and other prestigious publications in China. She studied business management and accounting in university, but never gave up on her long-standing passion for poetry and finally embraced her life’s calling upon graduation. Now seen as a representative voice among the post-90’s generation, her collection Seven Years was published in 2012. She currently lives in Chengdu.

A.K. Blakemoreis the author of two full-length collections: Humbert Summer (Eyewear, 2015) and Fondue (Offord Road Books, 2018). Her work has been appeared in magazines and journals including Poetry London, Ambit and Magma, and has been anthologised in Bloodaxe’s Voice Recognition: 21 Poets for the 21st Century, Stop/Sharpening/Your/Knives and The Best of British Poetry 2015. She was a winner of Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award 2007 and 2008. A K Blakemore lives and works in London.

Dave Haysomis a literary translator and editor who has been living in Beijing since 2007. He first started publishing translations online at spittingdog.net in 2012. In 2014 he became joint managing editor of Pathlight, a quarterly journal of Chinese literature in translation, and in 2015 he helped launch “Read Paper Republic”, a year-long initiative to publish one translation online every week. He has also written articles and essays on contemporary Chinese literature for publications such as Words Without Borders and China Dialogue.