Yu Xuanji was a Tang dynasty poet who lived approximately between 844 and 868 in the Chinese capital of Chang'an. She was, by turns, a courtesan, a concubine, and a Daoist nun, and was supposedly executed in her early twenties for having murdered her own maid in a fit of jealous rage. All her extant poems were probably written during the final ten years of her short and intense life.
Leonard Ng was born in Singapore in 1979. He studied Sociology and English Literature at the National University of Singapore, graduating at length with First Class Honours. His work has appeared in a variety of places, including Ceriph, the Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, the anthology Love Gathers All, as well as on his own site. He is also a translator of classical poetry into English; his translated work also includes The Song of Songs and the Laozi Daodejing. This Mortal World, his first collection of poems, is in press.
The Complete Poems of Yu Xuanji is available for download in ebook format here.
