Derby Wharf
Light Box
Newest Release:
A Quiet Little Idea: Salem–Nanjing Poetry Exchange, edited by Xinyi Guo, Siyan Liu, and J.D. Scrimgeour
Other titles:
Salem Power: Poems from the 2014 Improbable Places Poetry Tour, edited and with an introduction by Colleen Michaels
no! by Malcolm Miller
One Port, by Claire Keyes
The Route: From Salem Jail to Gallows Hill, After Mary Towne Estey, 1634-1692
by James R. Scrimgeour
Ticket Outta Here,
by Javy Awan
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Our Newest Release 2026
A Quiet Little Idea: Salem–Nanjing Poetry Exchange
Edited by Xinyi Guo, Siyan Liu, and J.D. Scrimgeour
An early center of U.S.–China trade, Salem, Massachusetts, “is a city of poetry and poets,” notes J.D. Scrimgeour, Poet Laureate for the city’s 400th anniversary. In 2022, Scrimgeour united the two traditions by convening a group of much-published local poets with a group of students from China majoring in English at Salem State University, where Scrimgeour is a professor. The interaction yielded a collection of poems in English that were translated into Chinese by the students. A Quiet Little Idea: Salem–Nanjing Poetry Exchange, edited by Xinyi Guo, Siyan Liu, and J.D. Scrimgeour, is the sixth in a series of poetry chapbooks published by Derby Wharf Light Box.
The 40-page chapbook includes poems with local settings by Scrimgeour; M.P. Carver, director of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival held in Salem every two years; film-maker and poet Kevin Carey; Colleen Michaels, founder of the Improbable Places Poetry Tour; the much-admired poet Kali Lightfoot; and several up-and-coming poets: Patricia Callan, JD Debris, and Gregory Glenn. Also included is a poem by the legendary Salem-born Beat generation poet Malcolm Miller (1930–2014).
The Chinese translators, from Nanjing Normal University, include editors Xinyi Guo and Siyan Liu plus students Wenhui Chen, Haohao Cheng, Ran Cheng, Xiaoyi Fan, Chenyun Jin, Tianqing Li, Ruizhi Qian, Kaiyan Shao, Yanjing Sheng, Yiran Wang, Yuxi Wang, Jiaqi Yang, Yixing Zhao, Shimin Zhou, and Yihan Zhu.
The chapbook has a unique design: one half is in English and the other half in Chinese—two complete booklets in one. A reader simply flips the book over to go from one language to the other—the English and Chinese pages correspond.
Poems by
Patricia Callan
Kevin Carey
M.P. Carver
JD Debris
Gregory Glenn
Kali Lightfoot
Colleen Michaels
Malcolm Miller
J.D. Scrimgeour
Translations by
Wenhui Chen
Haohao Cheng
Ran Cheng
Xiaoyi Fan
Xinyi Guo
Chenyun Jin
Tianqing Li
Siyan Liu
Ruizhi Qian
Kaiyan Shao
Yanjing Sheng
Yiran Wang
Yuxi Wang
Jiaqi Yang
Yixing Zhao
Shimin Zhou
Yihan Zhu