Video: Shangyang Fang Poetry Reading: Study of Sorrow

On October 8, 2025, in the CSWR Common Room, the CSWR and Sherah Bloor, Editor-in-Chief of Peripheries, hosted a celebration of the publication of Study of Sorrow: Translations (Copper Canyon Press, October 2025). Shangyang Fang read his translations of Song Dynasty Ci poems, which transform individual sadness into a collective experience spanning time, people, and place. Fang’s work, celebrated for its lyrical depth and emotional resonance, bridges cultures and traditions with a distinct poetic voice.

SHANGYANG FANG grew up in Chengdu, China. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Civil & Environmental Engineering from the University of Illinois and is a graduate of the Michener Center for Writers. He has received the Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Award and the Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University. His poems have appeared in The Nation, Ploughshares, The Yale Review, The Best American Poetry, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and The Forward Book of Poetry Anthology. Fang is an Assistant Professor of English & Creative Writing at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He is the author of the poetry collection, Burying the Mountain (Copper Canyon Press, 2021), and the translation book, Study of Sorrow: Translations (Copper Canyon Press, 2025).