Publications
A poetic meditation on historical, personal, and cultural pressures pre- and post- “Fall-of-Saigon” with verse biography on the poet's mother Diệp Anh Nguyễn, a stunt motorcyclist in an all-women Vietnamese circus troupe. Multilayered, plaintive, and provocative, the poems are alive with archive and inhabit histories. By turns lyrical and unsettling, Hoa Nguyen's poetry sings of language and loss; dialogues with time, myth and place; and communes with past and future ghosts.
Critical Praise:
"She offers us these songs of her mother, complete with her own investigations of language as both subject and practice"
- On the Sea Wall
“Remarkable not only for its unrelenting evisceration of clichés about Vietnam and its people, but also for the variety of forms in which this re-visioning is told"
- California Review of Books
Select Reviews & Interviews
On The Seawall
"She offers us these songs of her mother, complete with her own investigations of language as both subject and practice"
Montana Public Radio
What is a divinatory poetics? Can texts be haunted? This week, Toronto-based poet Hoa Nguyen dives into the narratives that prompted and sit within her new book of poetry, A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure.
California Review of Books
“Remarkable not only for its unrelenting evisceration of clichés about Vietnam and its people, but also for the variety of forms in which this re-visioning is told"
Violet Energy Ingots
Auto dish soap
1/2 and 1/2
Coffee beans
Bake the golden things
Rust coloured
Rust coloured
“Violet Energy Ingots is a fully mature work in that it is confident of both its voice and its readers’ alertness. It makes its own space. It demands it and holds it.”
Red Juice
Who will I be now
going through the blue door
that is going through me
I need you descending
and giving breath
I think I’m writing
this blue to get to you
“Red Juice is a bonus for ardent fans of the poet, and a fine introduction for those new to her wit and way with giving flight to the weight of everyday life.”
As Long As Trees Last
It’s not a time to run
I wear soft shoes
and it took a long time
to walk here
“Mekong Delta–born Hoa Nguyen’s As Long As Trees Last gives an up-to-the-minute, street-smart take on being alive in the 21st century.”
- Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal