FB ED Poetry Club

POETRY READINGS
COMMEMORATING THE FALL OF SAIGON

Readings and conversations with Vietnamese American poets
Tô Thuỳ Yên, Linh Dinh, and Phan Nhiên Hạo

Wednesday, APRIL 26, 2017, 8 P.M.
Hall of Graduate Studies (HGS), Room 211

TÔ THUỲ YÊN
(Tô Thùy Yên pseudonym of Ðinh Thành Tiên)

A poet of great renown in Vietnam, he was born in 1938, and is a graduate of the Faculty of Letters, Saigon University. A former officer in the Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces, he served thirteen years’ imprisonment in re-education camps following the war. Before 1975, he was one of the editors of Thế Kỷ 20, in the writer-staff of Sáng Tạo published in Saigon (1957) and an active member of Sang Tao Literary Group (with Mai Thao, 1956-1960), co-founder of Văn Nghệ. With Thụy Vũ, he founded Kẻ Sĩ Publishing. He came to the US in 1993. Publications: Tuyen tap tho To Thuy Yen (poetry collection. US: 1995), Thắp Tạ (poetry, 2005).

LINH DINH
Linh Dinh is the author of five collections of poems and three books of fiction, including a novel on Vietnam, Love Like Hate. His latest book is Postcards from the End of America, a collection of reports from his travel across the US over several years. He has published hundreds of political essays on the web, most regularly at Unz Review.

Dinh came to the US in 1975. In 2005, he was a David Wong fellow at the University of East Anglia, in Norwich, England. He spent 2002—2003 in Italy as a guest of the International Parliament of Writers and the town of Certaldo. He was a visiting faculty member at University of Pennsylvania. From 2015—2016, Dinh was the Picador Guest Professor for Literature at the University of Leipzig's Institute for American Studies in Leipzig, Germany.He is the author of two collections of stories, Fake House (Seven Stories Press, 200) and Blood and Soap (Seven Stories Press, 2004), and five books of poems: All Around What Empties Out (Tinfish, 2003), American Tatts (Chax, 2005), Borderless Bodies (Factory School, 2006), Jam Alerts (Chax, 2007), and Some Kind of Cheese Orgy (Chax, 2009). His first novel Love Like Hate (Seven Stories Press) was published in October 2010. His work has been anthologized in Best American Poetry 2000, Best American Poetry 2004, The Best American Poetry 2007, and Great American Prose Poems from Poe to the Present, among other places. The Village Voice picked Blood and Soap as one of the best books of 2004. (WIKIPEDIA)

PHAN NHIEN HAO
Phan Nhien Hao was born and raised in Vietnam. He came to the US in 1991 and now works as an academic librarian in Illinois. He holds a BA in American Literature from UCLA, a Master in Library Science also from UCLA, and a Master in Anthropology from Northern Illinois University. He is the author of two collections of poems in Vietnamese, Thiên Đường Chuông Giấy, (1998) [Paradise of Paper Bells] and Chế Tạo Thơ Ca 99-04, (2004) [Manufacturing Poetry 99-04]. His poems have been translated into English and published in literary journals and anthologies. His full-length, bilingual collection, Night, Fish and Charlie Parker, was translated by Linh Dinh and published by Tupelo in 2006. He also writes essays and translates literary works from English into Vietnamese.

Co-Sponsored by the Yale Council on Southeast Asia Studies at the MacMillan Center, the Undergraduate Organizations Committee (UOC),
Yale Vietnamese Students Association (ViSA), and Yale Vietnamese Studies Group (YVSG)

CHÂN PHƯƠNG giới thiệu Nhà Thơ TÔ THÙY YÊN trong đêm đọc thơ tưởng niệm SAIGON thất thủ ở đại học YALE, 26-4-2017

Ta về - một bóng trên đường lớn
Thơ chẳng ai đề vạt áo phai
Sao vẫn nghe đau mềm phế phủ
Mười năm, đá cũng ngậm ngùi thay
...
Ta về cúi mái đầu sương điểm
Nghe nặng từ tâm lượng đất trời
Cám ơn hoa đã vì ta nở
Thế giới vui từ mỗi lẻ loi
...
Ta về như lá rơi về cội
Bếp lửa nhân quần ấm tối nay
Chút rượu hồng đây xin tưới xuống
Giải oan cho cuộc biển dâu này...