Li Kuei-hsien

Li Kuei-hsien (born 1937) is a Taiwanese author, poet, cultural critic, translator, and inventor, born and raised in Taipei during the period of Japanese rule. He mainly writes poetry, but also provides reviews and translations.

He began writing poems in 1953 upon his graduation from the Taipei Institute of Technology. He is noted for writing extended verse in Taiwanese Hokkien and represents an influential figure in the Taiwanese literature movement. Li's work today appears in multi-volume sets of collected poems published in 2001, 2002, and 2003. His "February 28th Incident Requiem" was set to music in 2008 by composer Fan-Long Ko. Translations of Li's poems have been published in Japan, Korea, Russia, New Zealand, Mongolia, India, the former Yugoslavia, Romania, Greece, Spain, the Netherlands and Canada. Li has also translated poems and edited collections of modern poems from Italy and other European sources.

Lee authored Columbarium and Others and Selected Poems of Li Kuei-hsien.

Activities
Lee Kuei-shien started publishing poetry in 1953. In 1964, he joined the Li Poetry. Proficient in German, he was responsible for selecting German poems. Lee also ventured into the magazine publishing industry, serving as the production editor of the Invention magazine, president of Invention World magazine, and publisher of the Invention Enterprise magazine.

Li has served as chair of Taiwan's National Culture and Arts Foundation. Since 1976 he has been a member of the International Academy of Poets in England. In 1986, he established the Celebrity Publishing House and published two book series: the Taiwan Library and the World Library. He founded the Taiwan P.E.N. in 1987 and has served as the organizations president.

Besides, Lee Kuei-shien has been translating primarily German literature and is best known for his translations of Rilke. Since the 1980s, he has been committed to promoting international exchanges of poetry. He has also held positions such as adjunct professor at Chung Cheng University’s Graduate Institute of Taiwanese Literature, executive director of the Taiwan Provincial Inventors Association (now the Taiwan International Invention Award Winners Association), first-term executive director of the Chinese Poetry Society, president of the Taiwan PEN, founding member of the International Poets Academy, and chairman of the National Culture and Arts Foundation. He is currently an advisor to the Li Poetry and Literary Taiwan.

He has been awarded Korea's Distinguished Asian Poet award (1994), the Rong-hou Taiwanese Poet Prize (1997), India's Poets International Prize (2000), Taiwan's Lai Ho Literature Prize and Premier Culture Prize (2001), the Michael Madhusadan Poet Award (2002), the Wu San-lien Prize in Literature (2004) and Poet Medal of the Mongolian Cultural Foundation (2005). He was nominated three times as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature by the Indian International Society of Poets in 2001, 2003, and 2006.