# US Poet Laureate Arthur Sze on Translating Loss and Renewal

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/tricycle-talks-828620/us-poet-laureate-arthur-sze-on-translating-loss-and-renewal
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/tricycle-talks-828620/us-poet-laureate-arthur-sze-on-translating-loss-and-renewal.md
Podcast: [Tricycle Talks](https://stenobird.com/podcast/tricycle-talks-828620)
Published: 2025-10-08T10:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://tricycle.org/podcast/arthur-sze-translation
Audio file: https://pdst.fm/e/tracking.swap.fm/track/tcQd6Q6C0RUUlOHq1Ytj/mgln.ai/e/51/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.megaphone.fm/TPG3464671022.mp3?updated=1759849335
Processing state: not_requested
JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/tricycle-talks-828620/episodes/us-poet-laureate-arthur-sze-on-translating-loss-and-renewal
Duration seconds: 3527

## Resource

Arthur Sze is a poet and translator based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and he was recently named the 25th Poet Laureate of the United States. To celebrate his appointment, we’re visiting a 2024 Tricycle Talks episode with Sze. Unlike many contemporary American poets, Sze did not attend a traditional MFA program to learn to write poetry. Instead, the National Book Award winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist turned to translation to hone his craft. His 2024 collection, The Silk Dragon II: Translations of Chinese Poetry, compiles fifty years of his translations, illustrating the vitality and versatility of the Chinese poetic tradition across nearly two millennia. In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Sze to discuss the ruptures and continuities between classical and contemporary Chinese poetry, the destruction and renewal inherent in the process of translation, and why Sze believes that we need translation now more than ever. Plus, he reads a few poems from his new collection.

## Actions

- request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/tricycle-talks-828620/episodes/us-poet-laureate-arthur-sze-on-translating-loss-and-renewal/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.
- read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/tricycle-talks-828620/us-poet-laureate-arthur-sze-on-translating-loss-and-renewal.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.

A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed.

## Transcript

Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.