Live Encounters Poetry & Writing 16th Anniversary Volume One
November- December 2025
To Haizi, poems by Anna Yin.
To Haizi
Along Anqing’s ancient, gracious promenade,
I wander beneath high lanterns, flower-lit lights.
Unbidden, your verses echo on a whitewashed wall—
Am I, too, a sister, a kin,
seated by the river, endlessly remembered, asked about?
Decades on, the same river still flows—
toward the sea, with spring’s warmth, and blossoms in bloom.
But why did you leave your belongings on the tracks?
Your mother wept until no tears remained;
your brothers walked diverging paths.
And still, unbidden, we meet this.
I clutch my sole belonging tight,
drifting toward a farther ocean.
Note: Haizi (海子), a renowned Chinese poet from Anqing, ended his life
on March 26, 1989, at the age of twenty-five. He lay down on the railway tracks
in Shanhaiguan, bringing to a close a brief but blazing existence.
About Afterlife
Reading Lynn Tait’s “Thoughts on the Afterlife”
Scatter my ashes beneath a cedar
or across the ocean—
let raw roots drink me down,
let white waves carry me away,
becoming leaves,
or clouds…
Once, beyond this body,
I flew with verses,
walked among stars,
danced my own Milky Way,
believing I could travel
anywhere
with only a thought.
There is no end—
life drifts forward,
woven into stories…
until some small moment in me
settles, like raindrops,
on someone’s shoulder.
© Anna Yin
Anna Yin was born in China and immigrated to Canada in 1999. She served as Mississauga’s Inaugural Poet Laureate (2015–17) and as the Ontario representative for the League of Canadian Poets (2013–16). Anna is the author of seven poetry collections, including Breaking Into Blossom (Frontenac Press, 2025), and four books of translations, most notably Mirrors and Windows (Guernica Editions, 2021). Anna has received numerous honours, including the 2005 Ted Plantos Memorial Award, the MARTY Awards (2011, 2014, 2025), two U.S. scholarships, and grants from both the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts. Her works have appeared in Queen’s Quarterly, ARC Poetry, The New York Times, China Daily, CBC Radio, Literary Review of Canada, and elsewhere. She has performed on Parliament Hill, at the Austin International Poetry Festival, the Edmonton Poetry Festival, and at universities across China, Canada, and the United States. Since 2011, Anna has designed and led her Poetry Alive educational programs while also working in IT. In 2021, she founded SureWay Press to promote cultural exchange through translation, editing, and publishing services. https://www.surewaypress.com/en/