Yang Lian was born in Switzerland in 1955, and grew up in Beijing. He began writing when he was sent to the countryside in the 1970s. he was among the “Misty” school of Poets. His poems became well-known and influential inside and outside of China in the 1980s, especially when his sequence ‘Norilang’ was published in 1983.
Yang Lian was invited to visit Australia and New Zealand in 1988 and next year, he became a poet in exile and started his journey through out the global since then. All these years, his literary writing, as well as his out spoken voice, has been called as a highly individual voice in world literature, politics and culture.
Yang Lian has published fourteen collections of poems, three collections of prose and one selection of essays in Chinese. His work has also been translated into more than thirty languages, including English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese and many Eastern European languages. Among 14 books of poems in English translation, his most representative works including the sequences and long poems such as Yi, Where the Sea Stands Still, Concentric Circles, Narrative Poem and A Tower Built Downwards…etc. They display a profound understanding of, and creative links with, Classical Chinese poetry. His work has been reviewed as “like MacDiarmid meets Rilke with Samurai sword drawn!”, “one of the most representative voices of Chinese literature” and “one of the great world poets of our era”. Yang Lian and the Scottish poet W. N. Herbert together with Brian Holton and Qin Xiaoyu are the co-editors of Jade Ladder, a brand new Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Poetry (1978 – 2008) in English, and published by Bloodaxe Books in Apr, 2012.
2024，Yang Lian won the Zbigniew Herbert International Literary Award in Poland. A Tower Built Downwards, Yang Lian’s collection of poems in English translation, has been shortlisted for the inaugural PEN Heaney Prize. 2023, A Tower Built Downward, Yang Lian’s collection of poems in English translation, won the English PEN Award. 2021, Yang Lian won the first Sarah McGuire Prize for Poetry in Translation held by Poetry in Translation Centre, UK. 2020, Yang Lian won the“Jiu Ge Prize” of the first Miluo Literature Prize in China. 2019, Yang Lian won“Premio Sulmona Prize”in Italy; and the Beijing Literature Magazine Prize for Poetry in China. 2018 Premio International NordSud (2018 NordSud International Prize) for Literature in Italy; 2018 Janus Pannonius International Poetry Grand Prize in Hungary；2018 L’Aquila International Literature Prize. 2017, Yang Lian won the Shanghai Literature Magazine Prize for Poetry; and Narrative Poem, Yang Lian’s autographical book-length poem selected as a recommended translation by Poetry book Society in UK, as well as won the English PEN Award. 2016, Yang Lian was awarded The 2016 Pacific International Poetry Prize in Taiwan. 2015, Yang Lian has won The Li Bai Nomination Poetry Prize; Zuo Pin (Works) Magazine’s Prize for Sequence; The First Long Poem Prize (Fo Shan City, China); Great Kunlun Cultural Prize․Prize for Outstanding Contribution to Poetry. 2014, Yang Lian has won Capri International Poetry Prize, Italy. 2013, Yang Lian’s “Concentric Circles Trilogy” (Yi, Concentric Circles, Narrative Poem) has won first “Tianduo” prize for the long poems; 2012, Yang Lian has won Nonino International Literature Prize in Italy, the juries of the prize were presided by V S Naipaul. Yang Lian was also awarded the Flaiano International Poetry Prize (Italy, 1999) and his Where the Sea Stands Still: New Poems was Poetry Books Society Recommended Translation (UK, 1999).
Yang Lian has been elected a board member of PEN International in 2007, and re-elected in 2011.Yang Lian was a fellow of DAAD in Germany (1991) and Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin for 2012 / 2013. Since 2014, he has been a guest-professor in Shantou University, Guangdong Prov. China and he quitted the job at 2024. In 2013, He has been invited to become a member of The Norwegian Academy for Literature and Freedom of Expression.