I've been fascinated by the topic of translation ever since I started working with poetry, even before. How can you pick just the right words? Should you prioritize exactness over feeling? Grammar over tone? What if you get it wrong and mislead the reader and dishonor the writer? My first experiences wrestling with these questions were early and intense, when I volunteered as a medical interpreter in Ecuador in my teens. The stakes felt quite high if I got something wrong.

Many years after that, but now many years past, I heard the poet Red Pine liken the act of translation to dancing. It was a memorable conversation over a glass of whiskey at editor Michael Wieger's kitchen table. He said "the poem is always there close by, in the room with you, but you can't look at it straight on. You've got to find a way to sidle up and invite it to dance." This accurately describes my experience designing broadsides as well. There is always the question of how to honor the poem's origin while inviting it to occupy a new space, one where it might be held, and seen, in a whole new way. I can't help but overlay my own feelings and connotations in the design process; and in the end I don't desire to eliminate them because I think the resulting work would feel less human. But one has to be honest about what came from where. It's like tracing over a drawing again and again. Eventually the lines become infused with the pull of your own hand; it's a deep way to come to understand how the first form was put together, and to find a way toward your own impulse to create.

The last two lines of Tao Qian's poem, as Arthur translated them, speak to beautifully to this tension between original and translation: "In this there is a truth— / I wish to tell you, but lose the words." Can we ever communicate the original exactly? Is that even the point? Perhaps we can never fully bridge the gap, and perhaps that is the point: always this reaching out, reaching back, reaching towards. A willingness to try. A deepening of the dance.

It was an honor to work with Arthur's closely studied translation of Tao Qian's words, informative and distinct from many other projects I've done. It was my suggestion to set the title in Chinese, one that felt dicey for the intended audience (primarily English speaking) but a way to honor the poem's origin and throw the reader into a state of mystery at the outset, which echoes back from that last line. I originally planned to print the title and body of the poem in two separate passes, since I had to get a plate made for the Chinese characters. Working from plates vs type always means an opportunity to easily play with scale and I first imagined the title characters big, taking up at least a third of the visual space, perhaps in a lighter color, perhaps bleeding off the page… but then when I saw the characters themselves I knew at once I’d have to set them more simply and closer to the size of the body type itself, because they are dense and more square than I expected.

From here, I love how the more reserved setting underscores the contrast of the latin and non-latin alphabets; it’s something you don’t expect to see and I think because of that it opens up the mind and prepares a good ground for reading.

It was technically challenging to print the title (from a photopolymer plate) and body of the poem (handset metal type) at the same time, but I pulled it off thanks to a tiny scrap of a Boxcar Base (so grateful they sell their offcuts!) and the forgiving lockup of a Vandercook. I did wrestle a mystery half-point skew to the margins for many hours — the kind of thing almost no one else can see, and certainly not without me pointing it out, but that I’ll spend countless hours trying to correct and lose sleep over. Even when I know that some months down the road I may even not see it myself, which I know because of similar microscopic griefs I’ve traversed over decades of printing.

This is a constant for me. The work is never good enough in the moment. And I struggle and struggle to make it as good as I can, even just the tiniest bit better. And then some time later I turn around and see the piece and it’s like it always existed. There’s nothing wrong with it. Sure, it could have been a little to the left or the right. It could have been a different color or a finer line or an entirely different design. But there it is, just being itself, and serving the poem that inspired it.

Will this ever change? I don’t think so. I think my impossible standards and harsh critiques will stay with me. But with time has come greater capacity for acceptance, and even curiosity, about the shortcomings of a project. The idea of play, and experiment, winds its way in. The idea of failure distances. The stakes may not feel lower, but I know somehow that they are allowed to be. It’s just ink and paper after all. I can always print more!

Most of these broadsides were signed by the author with an acid-free calligraphic pen in bright red, a traditional color of good luck in China and a classic accent in the fine press tradition. When I realized the title should be more discreet to let the characters themselves sing, the question of what else could or should be added for illustrative accent went unanswered a long time. Then it came to me — since most of the edition was to be signed, why not add color with the signature itself? My first thought was red but I didn't suggest it, I asked Arthur instead — and his first thought was also red! A good sign.

I’ve had authors sign in color before and it always feels a little scary since no matter how many pens I try, I have no control (nor should I) over how the author signs, and it has a big impact on the design. Plus there is the challenge of building in space for the signature while creating a form that stands on its own, with or without the mark of the author’s hand. All challenges I welcome, and that I always learn from. It’s a big act of trust to hand over finished prints to be signed, and I know can be stressful for the person signing as well. But the final object feels like a true collaboration, one I could not fully physically produce on my own. And there’s the lovely feeling too of knowing that the poet was willing to take the time to honor my work, reciprocating the work I do to honor theirs. An exchange that’s worth the stress of not knowing exactly how the final piece will come out until it’s back in my hands.

And really, it’s not done until it reaches your hands, dear reader. We all complete the work by living with it, translating the poem's meaning across the days of our lives.

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Credits

From Transient Worlds, Copper Canyon Press. Copyright 2026 Arthur Sze. Used by permission.
 
Thanks to Copper Canyon for thinking of Expedition when this project came up, and thanks to Arthur for his quiet brilliance and for being game to sign two editions. 

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Links to purchase

Get the print: Drinking Wine (V) and the book: Transient Worlds.