1 . The hustle and bustle(喧嚣)of life, walking back and forth from the ideal to reality, and the inner confusion hidden behind a social mask-these daily experiences are recorded by Chinese youths in lines of poetry online. Recently, 124 Bilibili internet users shared their works in a poem collection.

One blogger on Xiaohongshu who goes by the nickname Gehuaren is one such poetry lover. The twenty-something girl not only writes poems as a form of entertainment in her spare time, but also improvises(即兴创作)poems for others at night markets in Yunnan. As a street-stall poet, Gehuaren often writes pieces of poetry quickly based on themes from customers. Once the poem has been completed, she refuses to change her work because she feels her poems reflect her first reaction. For her, everything in the world, no matter trivial or significant, can serve as her poetic inspiration. “A glass, a tree in the dawn or a person who once talked with me…these all could become themes for my poems,” said Gehuaren.

With free writing with a regular rhythm and broad themes, her poems strike a chord with many young people online, helping her gain over 190, 000 followers. Many have made comments “I feel healed by your poems because I can find beauty from unnoticeable things and in turn, slow down to reflect on my life.”

Apart from poetry, various means such as vlogging and photosharing can be used to record moments of daily life. But young people consider poetry to be the best way to express them. “Taking photos or vlogging can just show the object or emotions in real life. Yet poetry, which can be used to excite the imagination, shows the beauty of daily life, ”an 18-year-old said. So when he is inspired by the beauty of daily life, the boy writes it down into lines of poetry and then shares them with his friends on his WeChat Moments.

No matter why young people write their unique brand of poems, they are attempting to take every moment in lives seriously, face their lives bravely and actively express themselves.

1. How does Gehuaren find inspiration for her poems?

A．By referring to traditional Chinese poems.

B．By attending various online poetry lectures.

C．By exploring great moments in life.

D．By observing everyday life.

2. Why are Gehuaren’s poems so popular with her followers?

A．They are original and full of imagination.

B．They have a strong sense of rhythm.

C．They record the beauty of small and ordinary things.

D．They reflect the differences between the ideal and reality.

3. What’s the 18-year-old’s attitude towards poetry?

A．Positive.

B．Neutral.

C．Cautious.

D．Objective.

4. What can we infer about the young poets in the last paragraph?

A．They hope to avoid challenges.

B．They intend to impress their peers.

C．They try to escape from the busy life.

D．They make their thoughts known bravely.

2 . San Francisco Park ranger Amanda Barrows, who registered in City College of San Francisco (CCSF)’s Poetry for the People class, began to place a nightstand (床头柜) in Golden Gate Park with a note “take a poem, leave a poem” in December 2022. Since then, over 100 handwritten poems have been placed in the nightstand. “It’s completely unexpected,” said Barrows. “I’m really taken aback by the outpouring of support.”

Park ranger by day and poet by night, Barrows said she began writing and attending poetry workshops in 2020. The poetry course she attended was founded by Leslie Simon in 1975. The class advocates for a focus on the neighborhood, and the cultivation (培养) and public presentation of new poems. For Barrows, the idea that she could combine her job and her hobby by bringing poetry into parks was an inspiration. Barrows asked her friends to contribute their favorite poems to the nightstand as poems that could be taken.

Armed with an old nightstand, Barrows filled the stand with pens and paper. An added drawer at the bottom holds the poems that people “donate”. The concept reminded her of Little Free Libraries, which are fixtures across the city. “I was having anxiety. I had no idea what I was going to do; then it sort of just came to me,” said Barrows. “I was inspired by the little free libraries you see in SF, where you ‘take a book, leave a book’, and thought, ‘Maybe I could do this with poetry.’”

One of the teachers at the CCSF poetry course, Lauren Muller, told The Washington Post that “people need poetry now”, which she suggested as the reason for the success of Barrows’s project.

Past student projects included writing poetry on sidewalks in chalk and placing poems on the windshields (挡风玻璃) of cars. “It’s exciting to see the work that students are doing,” Muller continued. “My hope is that this will happen across city parks… elsewhere.”

1. What did Amanda Barrows do for her project?

A．She invited her friends to donate poems.

B．She gave a special poetry course by herself.

C．She read a lot of poems for people.

D．She equipped parks with many nightstands.

2. How did the little free libraries affect Amanda Barrows?

A．They made her interested in poetry.

B．They let her quit her job for her interest.

C．They gave her inspiration for her project.

D．They encouraged her to write more poems.

3. What did Muller think contributed to the success of Barrows’s project?

A．The benefits of writing poetry.

B．The public demand for poetry.

C．The help from her neighbors.

D．The large number of parks in SF.

4. What might be a suitable title for the text?

A．The Impacts of a Park Ranger’s Poem-writing

B．San Francisco’s Unique Poems on a Nightstand

C．The Spread of Poetry Throughout the Libraries

D．A Park Ranger’s Powerful Poetry Project

3 . Poetry Writing Contest

Contest information

Deadline: November 30th

Results: Announced on December 31st

Prizes: Win $ 1,600 in prize money

Guest judges: Ken Liu, Brian Evenson, and Faylita Hicks

Entry requirements

Your poetry can be laid out as you wish, as we understand that form often relates to the effect of a poem. However, please be sure to stick to a maximum of 3 pages per poem.

Submission guidelines

We accept works, written in English, from anywhere in the world. But we don’t accept works previously published elsewhere.

Writers over the age of thirteen are welcome to participate. Please note that if you’re aged 13-16 and your work is selected for publication, we’ll require a signature from a parent or a guardian.

Please include your name and contact information in your cover letter only and remove any identifying information from both the submitted work and the file name.

We edit every piece accepted for publication whether your work is selected for publication through our online blog or in our print magazine. For this cooperative process we’ll pair you with one of our senior editors. All our editors have been trained to help guide the development of each piece to reach its fullest potential in keeping with the author’s vision. This doesn’t mean we’ll take on a wild jumble of words and half-formed thoughts.

Notes

The contest reserves the right to NOT award a winner if the submissions don’t reach a publishable standard. In this case, the winner won’t be announced. Although this has rarely come to pass in our six-year publishing history, our top priority must remain with the quality of the work we publish.

1. What do you have to avoid in order to participate in the contest?

A．Writing a 3-page-long poem.

B．Writing your work in English.

C．Providing your contact information.

D．Submitting your entry after November 30th.

2. What do we know about the contest?

A．It is held on an annual basis.

B．It is intended for teenagers only.

C．It is open to global poetry lovers.

D．It is aimed at making poetry more popular.

3. What are you expected to do if your poem is selected for publication?

A．Make sure that it is original.

B．Polish it as you’re required to.

C．Go to receive the prize on time.

D．Give your permission to publish it.

4 . Unforgettable Book Throws Light on Racism (种族歧视)

Today, I would like to recommend a book to you, which taught me an important lesson about prejudice and racism.     1     The story is set in Alabama in the southern US, where the author grew up.

The main character in this novel is a lawyer named Atticus Finch from the American South. The American South in the 1960s was known to be a place where many white people looked down upon black people, except for Finch. When the local judge asked him to defend a black man named Tom Robinson, who was wrongly accused of raping a white woman, Finch agreed.     2     Still, Finch fought to discover the truth, even though he was under threat. He proved that Robinson is innocent (清白的). As Finch’s son Jem and daughter Scout grew up, they started to see more racial prejudice around them.     3    

The author Lee was born in Monroeville, Alabama in 1926. In her childhood, she, like Scout and Jem, learned about racial prejudice and the damage it could do. To Kill a Mockingbird was her first and only novel published.     4    

For me, the most memorable quotes in the book are “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but… sing their hearts out for us.     5    ” The description of childhood innocence in the story through Scout and Jem is connected with the dark evils of prejudice in the town, which provides a dramatic contrast and enables you to understand how dangerous racism and prejudice are. I want to recommend this book because it contains slightly complex and interesting sentence structures. It is a book that you will never forget.

A．It took her seven years to complete.

B．Racism exists at all levels of society.

C．People worked for the rights of black people.

D．But many people tried to stop Finch from doing his job.

E．That’s why it is morally and totally wrong to kill a mockingbird.

F．To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel published in1960 by American author Harper Lee.

G．And they finally understood the importance of looking at the world with an unprejudiced mind.

5 . 阅读下面短文，在空白处填入1个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。

Recently, 16 Chinese online novels have entered a     1     (collect) in the British Library, including My Heroic Husband, Up in the Heaven and so on.     2     (cover) themes of science fiction, history, reality and fantasy, these works represent the classics of Chinese online literature over the past 20 and more years.

The British Library usually collects works     3     appeal to readers or when the books’ value is considered high. Now readers can check the information of the 16 books     4     the library’s website and borrow printed copies.

As the Chinese online literature industry has     5     (gradual) matured after two-decade development, it has received increasing acknowledgment from home and abroad. It has also attracted     6     increasing number of readers from overseas. One of     7     (large) online literature platforms, China Literature Group, has authorized the digital and print copyrights of more than 800 online novels to overseas.

China Literature’s international portal Webnovel,     8     (establish) in 2017, has seen nearly 100 million readers access     9     (it) library of more than 2,600 works that     10     (translate) from Chinese. Also, more than 300,000 writers from around the world have created over 420,000 works online.

6 . 为提高学生的中文诗歌和英文诗歌欣赏水平，你校于上周末举办了一个中英文诗歌节。请写一篇有关这次诗歌节的英语短文，在学校英语报上发表。内容包括：
1.诗歌节的目的；
2.诗歌节的各种活动；
3.你的收获或感想。
注意：
1.词数100左右；
2.短文的标题已为你写好。

The School Chinese & English Poetry Festival

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7 . 阅读下面材料，在空白处填入适当的内容(1个单词)或括号内单词的正确形式。

In recent years, Chinese online literature has been recognized increasingly from home and abroad. For example, the British Library     1     (collect) Good Spring Time and 15 other Chinese online novels over a month ago. Covering themes of science fiction, history, reality and fantasy, these novels are considered the     2     (classic) of Chinese online literature from the past 20 years.

Good Spring Time is one of the     3     (famous) Chinese online novels. It focuses on Chinese porcelain culture, conveying a spirit that encourages people     4     (fight) against fate continuously, as well as the love and care among family members. Readers can see a splendid, elegant China through the tradition, romance, friendship, struggles and beauty     5     (describe) in the novel.

Hearing of the news     6     her work has been included in the Chinese bibliography of the British Library, Yi Qianchong, known     7     the author of Good Spring Time, is rather amazed and happy. “It’s a surprise to me that online fiction can     8     (add) to the collection of a foreign library. When my novel entered the collection of the National Library of China. I was very happy. It’s     9     milestone for my creation.”

“Today, when I heard that the British Library is collecting Chinese online literature, I’m     10     (delight) for online literature. It feels like the path of online novel writing is becoming ever wider.” she adds.

8 . These 4 novels will get your summer off to a terrific start

This Time Tomorrow

by Emma Straub

Straub’s new novel is a time-travel fantasy filled with her signature awareness of the infinite ways we humans make life harder for ourselves. The heroine here is a single woman named Alice who works at her old high school. Her father, a bestselling novelist who raised Alice on his own, is dying in a New York hospital. On the night of Alice’s 40th birthday, Alice returns from a drunken party and stumbles into the gift of time travel, which allows her to explore the big question, “What if”?

Search

by Michelle Huneven

Huneven’s comic novel is a delicious must-read for anyone who’s ever served on a committee. The narrator, Dana Potowski, is a food writer living in California who’s roped into joining the search committee for the new minister of the church. Huneven dramatizes how one strong personality—in this case a young woman swollen with insolence—can control a committee.

One-Shot Harry

by Gary Phillips

Group decisions are not something Harry Ingram worries about. He’s the star of this new hard-boiled mystery by veteran crime writer Gary Phillips. One-Shot Harry is set in L.A. in 1963, as racial tensions are worsening in advance of Martin Luther King’s upcoming Freedom Rally at Wrigley Field. Harry, a Black free news photographer who roams all over L.A. with his Speed Graphic camera, is the best of all possible guides to this moment. His job gives him entrée into neighborhoods and events that might otherwise be off-limits to him because of his race.

Knock Off the Hat

by Richard Stevenson

Richard Lipez, who wrote under the penname Richard Stevenson, was a groundbreaking author of gay detective novels featuring private eye Donald Strachey. Knock Off The Hat may be the best novel Dick ever wrote. Its main character, Clifford Waterman, is a former police detective dishonorably discharged from the Army during World War II for an “indecent act.”

1. What can we infer from the passage?

A．Straub is a bestselling novelist.

B．Huneven is a young woman swollen with insolence.

C．Black people were unable to enter into many places in 1963.

D．Clifford is a respectable former police detective.

2. What is the best choice for a time-travel novel lover?

A．One-Shot Harry	B．Search
C．Knock Off the Hat	D．This Time Tomorrow

3. What made Richard Stevenson famous?

A．He had a special penname.	B．He wrote gay detective novels.
C．He once served the army during WWⅡ.	D．He had a sharp vision.