Myself, My Train, and You

Ling Yu was born in Taipei. She received her BA in Chinese from National Taiwan University and her MA in East Asian Languages and Literatures from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She was the chief editor of Modern Poetry from 1986 to 1992. She co-founded the Poetry Now Club in 2001. She was a visiting scholar at the Department of English, Harvard University, 1991. She won the National Poet of the Year Award in 1993 for her poem 'An Acrobat Family'. In 2004, she was invited to the Rotterdam International Poetry Festival. Currently she teaches at National Yilan University. Ling Yu has published six books of poems, including Series on a City (1990), Names Lost on a Map (1992), An Acrobat Family (1996), Collected Songs of Winter Trees (1999), Recountings of the Hometown (2006), I Am Heading for You (2010). Ling Yu is deeply inspired by Chinese history, philosophy and mythology, from which she freely draws her material. Her poetry both describes and reflects the complexity of human existence.